Inclusive and Special Educator Preparation and the edTPA

Professionalizing and Politicizing Teaching

Public trust of professionals is essential. Historically, to maintain that trust, key aspects of a profession have been self-regulation, self-governance, autonomy, education within a specialized sphere of knowledge, clear standards of the profession, and adherence to those standards to protect the public. In return, members of the profession enjoy public trust, respect, fair compensation, and positive social status (Brante, 1988).

Given these definitions, teaching has an ambiguous relationship to the term profession. The status of teachers in the United States has waxed and waned during our history and has often had a “scapegoat” status (Goldstein, 2014). It follows that public trust in teachers has also had high and low points. Attempts to change that status began in earnest during the 1980s. Following the publication of A Nation at Risk (United States National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), the mid-1980s saw the development of organizations and standards designed to “professionalize” teaching by taking steps toward self-regulation. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) originated in 1987; the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) was initiated the same year to help states rethink teacher preparation and licensing (Cochran-Smith, 2001). Also in 1987, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standards recommended 10 weeks of clinical experiences, and demonstration and documentation of a Teacher Candidate’s competencies (Dover & Schultz, 2016).

Initial attempts at self-regulation of the profession focused on Teacher Performance Assessments (TPAs) that looked primarily at what are now referred to as “inputs”—content of courses taken, the expertise and experience of the faculty, number and type of clinical experiences, program completion, and documentation of competencies, and alignment of these with professional standards (Cochran-Smith, et al., 2013). Noting that there was not a direct link between “inputs” and student achievement, calls for linking teacher preparation to student achievement increased during the late 1990s and early 2000s, paving the way for accountability measures focusing on outcomes. Specifically, outcomes of teacher education that were considered for assessment included (a) teacher candidate test scores, (b) teacher candidate teaching performance, and (c) the impact of individual teacher’s practice on student performance.

In 2001, the federal NCLB Act required that every child be taught by a “highly qualified teacher” by the 2005-06 school year. The law required teachers to have “a bachelor’s degree, a state license and proven competency in every subject they teach” (Feller, 2006, para 7). Each state was to determine their own definition of “highly qualified.” In practice, the majority of states responded by requiring teachers to pass multiple-choice content tests in their certification area(s) and by changing state licensing requirements (in some cases strengthening them, in others, weakening them) (Darling-Hammond & Berry, 2006). One result of this aspect of NCLB was an outcome-based assessment focused on teacher candidate scores on content tests.

Although new tests were required, no state met all the mandates of the law by the deadline, likely due to the “enormity of the challenge.” (Feller, 2006, para 15). In spite of this challenge, Darling-Hammond and Berry (2006) argued that the law had not gone far enough. They believed that getting—and retaining—“highly qualified teachers” would require going beyond content tests and giving attention to teacher salaries, working conditions, assessing teacher candidates, and improving licensure portability across state lines (requiring common assessments), among other things. The goal of maintaining a steady supply of quality teachers, they argued, would be supported by a national performance assessment.

Efforts to self-regulate the teaching profession were spurred on by state legislatures and federal incentives. For example, the state of California passed legislation in 1998 that required teacher candidates to “pass a state-approved multiple measures teaching performance assessment with demonstrated validity and reliability to receive an initial license in CA” (“Performance Assessment for California Teachers” [PACT], 2014). As a result, the PACT Consortium developed a TPA which has been in use since 2002. It was patterned after the standards-based performance assessment used for National Board Certification, which had been used by experienced educators to that point (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Darling-Hammond & Hyler, 2013).

Another initiative that sped up the accountability and regulation of teachers was RTTT, a federal grant competition among states, authorized in 2009. Applicants were required to include a wide range of policy issues, including building a longitudinal evaluation system that tracks students from preschool through college and matches students to teachers, as well as institute more rigorous performance evaluations for teachers and principals as a way of promoting teacher effectiveness. These measures, it was thought, would help link student learning to teacher effectiveness. Although value-added measures have been difficult to implement, the goal of RTTT in this area was to produce an outcome-based measure showing teacher effectiveness (Klein, 2012; McCaffrey, Lockwood, Koretz, Louis, & Hamilton, 2004; Rubin, Stuart, & Zanutto, 2004).

The Profession of Teaching and the edTPA

Previously, we described internal efforts and external pressures to professionalize teaching. The California legislation in 1998 resulted in the creation of the PACT Consortium, comprised of teacher educators from 30 California universities, one district internship program, and one charter school network. PACT created a TPA which has been in use since 2002. (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Darling-Hammond & Hyler, 2013).

The edTPA arose from a partnership between the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Developers of the edTPA relied on experiences with implementation of state and national TPAs including the PACT, the NBPTS, and the InTASC Standards, as well as feedback from teacher educators and teachers to guide development and piloting of the exam. It is not clear to what extent disciplinary professional standards, such as the Council for Exceptional Children’s Special Educator Preparation Standards, informed the development of the special education specific handbooks. The edTPA is billed as a summative assessment comparable with exams in other fields, such as the bar exam for lawyers (American Federation of Teachers, 2012). It should not be used as the sole measure of beginning teacher quality (Cantrell & Kane, 2013); however, in some states, such as Wisconsin, a teacher cannot be certified even if they pass all other assessments and program-specific requirements but do not pass the edTPA.

The SCALE website explains that the edTPA was developed “by the profession. Teachers and teacher educators nationwide—more than 1,000 from 29 states and 400 institutions, participated in an extensive, multi-year development process including pilots and field tests with thousands of candidates.” SCALE has 26 staff members and lists 14 partners in addition to AACTE, including the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

The edTPA is focused on planning, instruction, and assessment, evaluated via work samples, video clips, lesson plans for three to five instructional learning segments and 25 to 40 pages of written reflective/narrative text (“About edTPA,” 2014). TCs plan a series of three to five lessons, video record themselves teaching the lesson (up to 20 minutes total; one edit allowed), and then use this information and student work samples to respond to prompts focused on planning, instruction, and assessment. The format of the test is thus primarily narrative, with supporting documentation including the required video and student work samples. TCs submit this information electronically, after registering and paying US$300 to Pearson. Pearson’s Evaluation Systems group is responsible for administration and scoring of the test. Reviewers, recruited and trained by Pearson, evaluate TCs on their ability to perform on 15 rubrics (five each in planning, instruction, and assessment). TCs can earn up to 5 points per rubric, for a total score of 75. Cut scores vary based on the state and/or teacher preparation program. A suggested passing score range is from 37 to 42 (“Recommended Professional Performance Standards,” 2017).

The edTPA handbook is available in several different versions to cover 27 licensure areas. Handbook requirements vary based on the discipline. For example, the Special Education Handbook has a requirement of reflection and analysis based on the progress of a focus learner with multiple learning needs rather than a classroom of students. As of July 2017, engagement in the edTPA in the United States varies across four levels: (a) not yet participating (11 states), (b) policy in place (16 states), (c) taking steps toward implementation (three states), and (d) state participating in edTPA (21 states, including the District of Columbia) (“Participation Map,” 2017).

Questions and Controversies Surrounding the edTPA and Articles in This Issue

The rapid adoption of this high-stakes test raises many questions and controversies. This section outlines just some of the questions raised by the adoption and implementation of the edTPA.

How and why is the edTPA being adopted so quickly around the country? Who is making decisions about these assessments and what information are they using to do so? The first article in this issue provides some transparency on the process of edTPA adoption at the state level. The authors, Hanley-Maxwell and Wycoff-Horn, are university and state department of public instruction personnel who worked together to make the determination to adopt the edTPA in Wisconsin. Their article outlines the process they went through to adopt the edTPA. This is an important addition to the literature and it provides insight into how the edTPA is gaining currency around the county in spite of some gaps in the knowledge base.

What are special education EPPs giving up to have standardized accountability? What does it say about a standardized test that purportedly captures the essence of a profession if important concepts and complex learning contexts are omitted, and only the technical is focused on? Are students spending their time on these tasks to the exclusion of learning other essential aspects of their craft? Can one assessment capture and assess the complexities of the variety of settings and contexts teachers work in? Bergstrand Othman, Robinson, and Molfenter (in this issue) explore challenges with teacher education programs exerting agency in their decision making about how to embed edTPA into programs and courses, as well as other challenges with edTPA implementation specific to the field of special education. They also address the impact of a consequential edTPA on the content of teacher preparation courses and experiences, as well as raising concerns about the authenticity of the environments selected by a special education teacher candidate.

What is the ideological perspective represented by the consortium? What perspectives are missing from the group of professional educators who designed the test? Our field has long-standing competing views about essential aspects of the field (Gallagher, Connor, & Ferri, 2014). Any assessment that is central to the field of special education will need to consider issues of inclusive teaching, differentiated instruction, culturally responsive teaching, and collaboration with general educators, to name just a few areas. Four of the articles in this special issue do just that. Bacon and Blachman (in this issue) examine the edTPA, journal entries, and survey results completed by preservice teachers at an urban university in New York City, who completed and submitted their edTPAs. Their article examines and questions how the edTPA defines the field of special education and provides insight into how TCs viewed the process of completing the edTPA.

Bartlett, Otis-Wilborn, and Peters (in this issue) interviewed teacher educators to determine their responses to the edTPA, as much a requirement for EPPs as for TCs. Teacher educators experienced cognitive dissonance while trying to aid TCs in passing the test to obtain licensure but at the same time wanting to resist the ways the test co-opted precious program time to address issues in practice. In addition, the authors argue that, rather than professionalize teaching as was one goal of the edTPA, the lack of democratic participation in the process leads to the opposite: deprofessionalization.

Kuranishi and Oyler (in this issue) present the scores that Kuranihi received on the edTPA while comparing these to descriptions of program expectations and his submitted artifacts. The discrepancies between edTPA scores and university and school-based evaluators who observed Kuranishi’s teaching over the course of a school year raise important questions about what the edTPA may capture and what it may miss as an assessment tool.

Pugach (in this issue) contributes an analysis of the edTPA with a particular focus on ways in which the edTPA promotes collaboration between general and special educators - or does not. Implications for teacher educators are included in the form of a checklist borrowed from the field of medicine to improve outcomes among experts. In this case, the checklist can provide guidance for collaborative dialogue across assessments.

Does this new mandate disproportionately impact some students? Are students whose first language is not English, who may not have technical writing expertise, who may not have technological skills and equipment required to videotape, upload, and send video (and blur out the faces and audio of students who did not return a permission slip) being shortchanged? Au (2013) asked, “I wonder if the edTPA will systematically reproduce race and class inequalities, like every other high-stakes, standardized test?” (para. 22).

Are there opportunities for discussion and input from Teacher Educators? SCALE made some notable changes to the Special Education Handbook after much confusion over the first several (“2013-14 Handbooks Are Now Available,” 2013); the changes were based on field tests. Thus, there were opportunities for input from teacher candidates and teacher educators. Nevertheless, now that decisions have been made, some have argued that opportunities for TCs and teacher educators’ input are no longer available. (Reagan, Schram, McCurdy, Chang, & Evans, 2016). Bartlett, Otis-Wilborn, and Peters (in this issue) also address this issue in their article. This is an important question for our field to consider as decisions about who controls the process and content of special education teacher assessment moves forward.

The articles in this special issue are designed to provide teacher educators in inclusive and special education with new ways of understanding and thinking about the assessment that is increasingly being adopted across the country. As we learn more about the assumptions embedded in the assessment that is becoming the standard-bearer for our profession, we all must determine what the essential aspects of the role of an inclusive and special educator are. We will need to debate and discuss these with colleagues across our state and country. We will need to communicate these important elements and work with local and state politicians who are crafting policy (West & Shepherd, 2016). We will need to learn from other professions and develop a representative group of special educators selected by the field to manage the self-regulation of our profession. We hope this issue will contribute to the knowledge base in special education teacher preparation assessment—and help us all to engage in the professional and political process that is teacher education.