Assessing the Assessment: Evidence of Reliability and Validity in the edTPA

Research Rundown Issue: January '20
Publisher: American Educational Research Journal
Date Published: December '19

Description

The Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) is a standards-based assessment used to identify whether teacher candidates meet a set of core competencies. Now that the assessment has been in place for about five years, researchers worked to examine whether it is an effective tool for assessing aspiring teachers. They concluded that the results are not always reliable or precise, with potential negative impacts on teacher candidates. Until these issues are further analyzed and resolved, the researchers suggest that the edTPA should not be used for high-stakes decisions for individual teachers.

Why This Matters in Minnesota

The Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) is currently undergoing rulemaking for teacher preparation unit and program regulations, which are the requirements all teacher preparation program providers must meet to prepare candidates for teacher licensure in Minnesota. One of the proposed regulations would keep the edTPA as the board-adopted teacher performance assessment required for licensure, as well as one of the measures for program effectiveness. Given the results of the study, PELSB should reconsider adopting the edTPA until the issues are further analyzed and resolved.