Members from around the nation joined together at this year’s Annual Meeting to engage in conversations about edTPA, its impact, powerful potential, and usefulness as a tool to assess beginning teachers’ readiness to teach. Opening with a breakfast for members of the national Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (TPAC), representatives from the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE), AACTE and Pearson updated members on edTPA’s current stage of development and implementation.

From Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim

ORLANDO, Fla. — When Evelyn Perry — an administrator within the School of Education and Urban Studies at Morgan State University — first learned about a relatively new teacher assessment tool known as edTPA, her first reaction was, “This is a lot of work.”

Congratulations to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standard for winning a $3 million Investing in Innovation Grant to move forward with an initiative to improve teacher training in math and science. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium are proud partners in this effort. The grant will allow the National Board, with the help of its partners, to build an online repository of classroom videos and other resources that help illustrate master teaching.

Read Full National Board Press Release

Etta Hollins, Kauffman Endowed Chair for Urban Teacher Education, University of Missouri-Kansas City, provides a ringing endorsement for edTPA. Hollins’ statement, linked below, posits that edTPA is “one of the most important and promising steps now being taken to improve the teaching profession.”

Finally, a Truly Promising New Approach to Improving Teacher Preparation

An article written by Marcy Singer-Gabella, edTPA coordinator of Vanderbilt University, has been published in the Hechinger Report. The opinion piece, entitled “New Way of Testing Rookie Teachers Could Be a Game Changer”, focuses on edTPA as an answer to challenges associated with teacher preparation and effectiveness. To read the full article, click the link below:

New Way of Testing Rookie Teachers Could Be a Game Changer

Linda Darling-Hammond’s recent article on teacher education reform, published in Inside Higher Ed, focuses on the strengths of edTPA as a valid accountability tool and agent of professionally-led reform.  To read the full essay, “Real Teacher Ed Reform”, follow the link below. The article was subsequently republished in The Washington Post’s Answer Sheet.

Real Teacher Ed Reform