By Rachel Garver, Drew Gitomer, and Emily Hodge
It has almost been one year since educator preparation programs (EPPs) across New Jersey have been released from using edTPA as a state-mandated teacher performance assessment. We interviewed EPPs at the onset of this change to see what performance assessments they planned to use instead, and we conducted a second round of interviews this fall to track the implementation of their performance assessment and its impact on students, faculty, and program design.
In our last blog post, we looked to past research and historical policy trends to posit that the state’s deregulation around performance assessment could potentially represent either an enhanced professionalization of teacher education or a lowering of standards for the teaching profession. In this blog post, we examine 12 interviews we conducted this fall to understand how EPPs have experienced the shift from a state-mandated performance assessment to a locally determined and administered assessment.
Almost all EPPs identified the removal of a state-mandated performance assessment as an increase in their autonomy and noted this as a positive development. As one EPP representative stated, “I think that we do have more control, and I think that that is a good thing.” EPPs explained that they now have full authority to determine when a teacher candidate is ready to enter the profession, rather than ceding that power to Pearson, the company behind edTPA. Across these interviews there was a consistent view that the new performance assessments allowed for those with greater expertise to be making judgements about candidates on the basis of much stronger evidence about their teaching ability, resulting in a more valid process.
Celebrating this shift in power, one EPP representative explained: “We are the folks who determine now whether or not a student is qualified to be in the classroom, and since we are the folks who prepare them and have had the relationship with them for two years, I think that our faculty and our mentors and cooperating teachers are in a better position to make that decision.” Another EPP representative explained how increased autonomy relates to increased validity, saying, “I think it’s great that the EPP now has more authority to determine who is well prepared and who is not, since they’re the ones who know the students and have been supporting the students throughout their journey.”
However, a few EPPs did not experience the policy change as a meaningful shift in their professional authority in determining candidate readiness. As one EPP representative explained, “I did not feel professionally out of control when we had edTPA.” EPPs such as this one noted that their students had been overwhelmingly successful with the edTPA and, therefore, did not see Pearson as a powerful decision-maker. In addition, they previously had the power to counsel candidates out of the profession in cases where they felt they did not perform up to par, even if those individuals had passed the edTPA. However, these EPPs did describe how the removal of edTPA as a mandate allowed them greater authority over program design, given that they no longer needed to dedicate so many resources and instructional time to preparing candidates for the edTPA. One EPP that did not see the removal of edTPA as a major change, given their students’ successful pass rate, did celebrate the decreased involvement of the state in preparation overall:
I’m always a little bit uncomfortable when the state becomes too intrusive in the areas of curriculum and assessment. I’ve always felt, tell us what the expectations and standards are and then leave it to us to determine how we’re going to meet those and assess those requirements. So, I think this step took us more in that direction and gave us a bit more autonomy. And I think it’s a good thing.
With the removal of edTPA as a mandated assessment, EPPs now had more latitude to align their program with their vision of high-quality teacher preparation.
Several EPPs understood their increased authority around teacher performance assessment—along with the recent removal of the PRAXIS basic skills exam—as reflecting a trend toward greater trust in teacher educators and the teaching profession. One EPP interpreted the state’s minimal oversight of the EPPs’ new performance assessments as “trust in each EPP that they know what is right for their students.”
Individuals we interviewed who have been engaged in teacher preparation for several decades put this shift in historical context, explaining that deregulation and increased regulation around teacher preparation go in waves along with the political climate: “I’ve been in this long enough that I remember when we had control, and then when it felt like [it] was disappearing. Now it seems it’s coming back to us a bit, and I feel positive and hopeful about that.” Another EPP explained:
We went through quite a bit of time here where there was a national Zeitgeist that in order to improve education, we’ve got to somehow fix teacher education … the subtext could be seen as, ‘we don’t really trust what you’re doing, so we’re going to need a third party to check on what you’re doing and whether it’s good or not.’ … So I think it’s helped with teacher education in terms of giving us the autonomy … increasing the level of trust in the work that we’re doing, but again still maintaining important checks and balances in the system.
Less optimistic about a long-term shift toward greater autonomy, one EPP described how teacher preparation is subject to a “constant push/pull and depending on who’s sitting in what chair at the state office, we’re just being yanked around all the time.”
In the current context, increased EPP authority may not be due to top-down political forces but rather to grassroots professional advocacy. An administrator at one EPP was hopeful that the recent changes in New Jersey reflect the power of the profession to influence policy, suggesting that the change may be due less to changes in the political climate around teaching and more to the power of collective organizing:
I see all of these things as part of one sort of movement towards a certain amount of self-agency for the profession … to think that educators and … the profession … broadly could have possibly impact[ed] the decisions that are being made at the state level and policymakers … and the fact that we could influence the legislature and the governor around these issues. It takes a large group of people to do that, but I think that that’s a sign to me of a certain amount of professionalism or being able to at least have some sense about how your profession is regulated.
As we continue to analyze our data, we will stay attuned to the roles of both state (de)regulation and professional organizing in the professionalization or de-professionalization of teaching and teacher preparation.