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.

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

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

New Name for the TPA: As we approach the release of the TPA Operational Handbooks and continued use of the TPA this Fall, we want you to be the first to know that the TPA now has a new, official name – edTPA. This new name will keep at the forefront the educative nature of the assessment and its role in supporting candidate learning and program renewal.

edTPA participants were able to attend a set of two recent webinars: the Beyond the Field Test: edTPA Usage Plan for 2012-2013 webinar, held on June 27th, and the Lessons Learned from the TPAC Field Test webinar, held on July 12th. We are pleased to be able to offer archives of these webinars to edTPA participants on TPAC Online.

An interview with Linda Darling-Hammond was recently featured in the May issue of ASCD‘s Educational Leadership journal. The interview, entitled The Challenges of Supporting New Teachers, provides insights into the preparation and support new teachers require, touching on the role of performance assessment prior to and during the first few years of teaching. The full article can be reviewed by clicking the link: The Challenges of Supporting New Teachers