From 2016 through 2022, all teacher education candidates in New Jersey were required by statute to complete a specific performance assessment, the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), in order to gain certification. edTPA is a complex performance assessment that requires candidates to share lesson plans, a video from the classroom they teach, and the assessments they develop, all with a detailed analysis and commentary. It was adopted as part of broader efforts to professionalize the field of teaching by having higher, consistent standards for teacher licensure.
New Jersey adopted the edTPA in 2016, one of 20 states to do so in a similar time frame. Just six years later, on December 16, 2022, Governor Phil Murphy signed legislation that removed the edTPA as a statewide requirement for teacher certification in New Jersey. Under the new policy, each educator preparation program (EPP) was responsible for designing and/or selecting a performance-based assessment to evaluate their own candidates.
These performance assessment changes affecting EPPs happened during a time of significant pressures on teacher education and the teacher profession more broadly, including the extreme politicization of curricula and teacher shortages. This has also been a period where traditional reliance on high-stakes assessment for K–12 students, as well as teachers, has been part of a larger policy debate. These contextual factors, as well as the move away from edTPA, are not specific to New Jersey and represent national trends.
This study examined what happens on the ground when years of strong state control and authority over teacher licensure is suddenly minimized. In what ways do local educational institutions change or maintain practices when state oversight is explicitly reduced and they gain increased autonomy? The case of teacher performance assessment and the changing responsibility and authority of the New Jersey Department of Education and teacher preparation institutions provided an interesting opportunity to examine this question.
To answer this question, we conducted two sets of interviews with individual programs. Our first conversations occurred during fall 2023, when programs were planning what to do in response to the new legislation. The second set of interviews occurred in fall 2024, after the first full year of implementation of the program-specific assessment models.
The main questions and findings of the study include:
How did programs plan for the policy change?
The legislation went through several cycles before being signed by the Governor. Once enacted, programs began working individually and collectively to consider new assessment models in anticipation of rulemaking by the State Department of Education.
What was the early reaction to the policy change?
Teacher education programs were almost, but not completely, supportive of the change. They saw the removal of the edTPA as eliminating a major burden that had skewed the preparation of teachers in unproductive ways. They were also very supportive of the idea that decisions about their candidates were now in their hands rather than assigned to an external party.
What potential benefits and challenges did programs foresee?
The programs anticipated that the changes would allow them to work more closely with and provide better feedback to teacher candidates during their field placements and give candidates and faculty the opportunity to focus their attention on matters of teaching rather than test preparation. Some programs were concerned, however, about their own capacity to assess students now that they, rather than an external testing company, were responsible for scoring candidates’ work.
What did the new assessment systems look like?
For the most part, the programs did not wholly dismiss assessment features of the edTPA, as they felt aspects of it had significant merit. However, there were a number of features that were found objectionable and counterproductive, so these aspects were significantly modified. In the end, programs came up with a broad variety of solutions, although all relied heavily on multiple observations of their candidates during student teaching.
How was the policy change related to shifting conceptions of validity and utility?
The edTPA was adopted by New Jersey and other states as an assessment that had substantial technical merit from an educational measurement perspective. Although those claims were later placed in doubt, teacher education programs immediately moved to see the primary purpose of the new assessment models as supporting the formative development of pre-service teachers and were much less attentive to the technical dimensions of their assessments.
How did the EPPs understand the impact of removing the edTPA on increasing the supply of potential teachers?
Despite the initial policy argument about the edTPA and its impact on teacher shortages, we saw no evidence that programs saw the edTPA or its successors as having a material impact on people seeking to become teachers through their programs. They believed that other factors were much more determinative of their choices.