Fulfilling Our Educative Mission: A Response to edTPA Critique

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) provides a commentary on the manuscripts in this special issue, responding to criticisms of edTPA as an assessment that narrows the curriculum, heavily relies on students’ academic writing skills, and creates additional burdens for teacher candidates. The commentary highlights how edTPA is intended to strengthen teacher candidates’ teaching and provides suggestions for educative implementation that could improve teacher education programs. Education Policy Analysis Archives Vo l. 26 No. 30 SPECIAL ISSUE 2


Fulfilling Our Educative Mission: A Response to edTPA Critique
As developers of edTPA and its primary support provider for implementation across more than 750 teacher preparation programs nationally, we acknowledge all scholarship examining the consequences of teacher assessment both pro and con.The collection of articles in this featured issue of EPAA puts forth the hypothesis that edTPA is somehow grounded in policy movements that advocate privatization and a neo-liberal agenda that is vague and often ideological.However, there is a simpler and more substantiated historical perspective supported by state policy.Since the launching of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (Shulman and Sykes, 1986) and the foundational report authored by Darling Hammond, Berry & Thoreson (2001), scholars and policymakers have consistently argued for an objective independent assessment of teaching performance embedded in practice and as a gateway to teacher licensure, accreditation and certification.In fact, the AFT (2012) has publicly called for "standards for entry into the profession through a process similar to the bar examination in law or the board certification process in medicine.The process requires candidates to demonstrate competence in essential dimensions of successful teaching before being allowed to take responsibility for a classroom and become a teacher of record.Such an assessment system would entail several components aligned with clearly articulated essential dimensions of professional teaching that together would constitute a threshold for entrance into the profession." (p. 3) edTPA was purposely designed to stand on the shoulders of the ground-breaking work of the National Board and has adopted its enduring design framework for assessments that are subject specific (content based pedagogy) and focused on the job of teaching with respect to a teacher's skills and abilities to Plan, Instruct, Assess and Reflect.Our most salient response against the argument that edTPA is a stalking horse for promoting a neo-liberal agenda is the history and prevalence of state policies that put in place job related performance assessments to support state licensure, teacher evaluation and accreditation.Not only is it a state's right to set professional licensure standards to ensure a common expectation of professional practice, it is their ethical and moral duty to set standards of practice.Licensure standards are set by states routinely for plumbers, bakers, lawyers and doctors and every profession in-between.Moreover, teaching standards should be a civil right for children because the consequences for students who have under-prepared or less competent teachers are grave.There is common agreement that when children have successive years of weak teaching, they fall further and further behind and their opportunities for career and life long success is seriously diminished (e.g., Sanders & Horn, 1998).More simply stated, as John Dewey (1907) asserted more than a century ago -"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children."Forty-five states have adopted some form of teacher performance assessment (TPA) as part of a multi-measure system of assessments to evaluate teaching.Overall, we fully endorse and support the development and implementation of teacher performance assessments used by states and supported by various testing vendors-including edTPA, PPAT, NOTE, PACT, CalTPA, RESA, Proteach or other new and emerging models --it is the right and equitable thing to do for parents and students.
Developed by and for the profession, edTPA is intended as a capstone, summative assessment that contributes to a multiple measures assessment system already required by states for licensure that include indicators of teaching competence such as subject matter and basic skills tests, high quality program based assessments of candidate progress and completion, program GPA, and ongoing clinical supervisory evaluation and feedback.Therefore, the development of edTPA was sparked, not by a neo-liberal agenda, but by a sense of professional responsibility and a long history of performance based assessment that provides actionable evidence for improving teaching and learning (Darling Hammond, 2010;Peck, Singer-Gabella, Sloan & Lin, 2014).Further, an external assessment can help teacher preparation programs establish a common standard of practice across all preparation routes that is equitable and comparable and independent of where a candidate is prepared.Use of such assessments can counter the widespread critique and public perception that education programs are not rigorous, too theoretical and/or inconsistent with expectations for teaching in their local schools.
The major development work for edTPA was accomplished with teacher educators and teachers prior to selecting an operational partner necessary to make it available at a large scale (SCALE, 2013).edTPA was exclusively designed and developed by SCALE and Pearson had no role in the development of the assessment.The design of the assessment is rooted in constructs drawn from research on effective teaching (SCALE, 2015b) and based on long established standards for the profession (e.g., Interstate New Teacher Assessment Consortium and National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) -leveraging knowledge of students and their personal, cultural and community assets to inform planning, differentiation of instruction based on students' strengths and needs, teaching toward conceptual understanding and the development of higher-order thinking skills, engaging students in meaningful learning tasks, providing feedback, and using assessment to inform planning and re-teaching.In addition, edTPA's subject specific components honor the foundational work of Lee Shulman (1986) regarding the role that content pedagogy plays in the development of teachers, as well as the essential content understandings and research based pedagogical practices for each licensure field.For example, consistent with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards, the elementary, middle childhood, and secondary mathematics versions of edTPA (SCALE, 2016b) require candidates to demonstrate subject-specific, grade-level appropriate pedagogy in mathematics.The assessment requires that the central focus of their learning segment supports students' development of conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and problem solving/reasoning skills inherent in a standards-based topic; that their lesson design includes mathematics-pertinent language demands and supports, including accessible representations of concepts; and that assessments provide opportunities for students to demonstrate development of mathematics concepts and reasoning skills.
The high leverage teaching practices assessed by edTPA rubrics embedded in all 27 edTPA handbooks reflect principles of effective teaching constructs that are authentic and job related and were validated through systematic studies of content validity, job analysis and bias and sensitivity reviews, and piloted with prospective teachers and teacher educators prior to edTPA's operational launch in 2014 (APA, AERA, NCME, 2014;SCALE, 2013).These constructs do not privilege any particular pedagogical approach nor theoretical frame (SCALE, 2015b).However, they do require candidates to think carefully about their own students and instructional approaches best suited to their strengths and needs.
We are perplexed by the perceptions of authors in this issue and elsewhere that edTPA prevents candidates from customizing teaching decisions to the students they teach, as this is a foundational principle reflected in multiple edTPA rubrics.For example, in the planning task, candidates must justify their instructional design, resources and assessments based on their knowledge of students' prior academic learning as well as their personal, cultural and community assets, and language development.Further, candidates actually score higher on edTPA (at levels 4 and 5 on the five-point scale) when they present evidence they can tailor instruction and assessment to address the differentiated strengths and needs of their students (SCALE, 2016b, see Rubrics 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 15).But the principal goal is not in the service of higher scores on edTPA, it is about reflecting on one's own teaching context and developing a mindset that understanding one's students matters to what teachers do day to day.To quote Dewey (1916) again, "We don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience."Perhaps the design issues presented in these papers regarding customizing or differentiating instruction are based on perceived constraints of teacher candidate placements and/or program interpretations of edTPA requirements and not the assessment itself?We will attend to these perceptions and other implementation puzzles raised in the articles in the remaining sections of this response.

edTPA and High Stakes Corruption
As described throughout the articles in this issue, there is an on-going debate in our profession about whether assessments should drive the design and evaluation of teacher education programs, whether high-stakes assessment by its very presence narrows the curriculum or is a corrupting influence on practice.More specifically, questions are raised about whether externally developed performance assessments can authentically measure the teaching skills and abilities that teachers need to be effective (Cochran-Smith, Piazza, & Powers, 2013).
We fully acknowledge Campbell's principle that the high stakes nature of any assessment can be a corrupting influence.As cited by Nichols and Berliner (2005, p. 4), Campbell's law has two parts, one of which is concerned with the validity of the indicators we use, and one of which is concerned with the organizations and the people that work with indicators when they take on exceptional value.Campbell states, "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." However, being mindful of the impact of high stakes assessment and based on our earlier teacher performance assessment work (e.g., the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT)), edTPA was purposely designed to focus on providing a support and assessment system with a wide range of tools and resources that help programs avoid compliance-based, high stakes implementation.Unique among externally delivered high stakes assessments, SCALE and AACTE provide support to use edTPA resources as an opportunity for inquiry (Peck and McDonald, 2013) and educative implementation.Resources offered to programs are specifically designed to support faculty learning about and from edTPA-what it intends to measure and ways to engage with and interrogate the assessment as one measure of the core of effective beginning teaching practice, as it relates to their own program mission and values AND NOT replace sound preparation practices.
Strong preparation programs are already preparing candidates for what edTPA measures-inquiry helps faculty see potential gaps, challenges or opportunities in programs that need to be addressed.edTPA resources include nearly 200 support items downloaded more than 1,000,000 times by the 9000 teacher educators in the edTPA professional community at edTPA.aacte.org.Further, our national academy of expert consultants (75 teacher preparation program faculty with extensive edTPA experience), have provided about 200 workshops across more than a dozen states.These resources are intended to move away from compliance-based approaches to inquiry based uses of edTPA.For example, resources such as local evaluation and curriculum inquiry protocols, guides for examining and providing feedback based on candidates' edTPA evidence, individualized growth plans informing ongoing professional development during induction, feature ways for programs to examine edTPA as building blocks for program coherence, communication with P-12 partners, and opportunities for engaging in reflective practice that improves teacher preparation.
Further, the reliability and validity of edTPA has been studied more intensively than any other licensure assessment adopted by states.SCALE has publically disseminated technical reports of the reliability and validity for edTPA (see SCALE, 2013SCALE, , 2015SCALE, , 2016SCALE, , 2017) ) consistent with the APA, AERA, NCME technical standards (2014).However, as represented in the articles presented here, we are consistently combating some programs' tendencies to overemphasize the role of the assessment, lose sight of edTPA within a multiple measures context, yield to the false narrative that you need to 'teach the test" to be successful on edTPA and compromise program mission and values.In contrast, we are encouraged that edTPA can be a positive force in the development of teachers (there is evidence cited in this volume and elsewhere of educative use of edTPA).There is growing evidence that programs that choose to take an inquiry based approach (Fayne & Qian, 2016;Peck & McDonald, 2013;Whittaker & Nelson, 2013) to implementing performance based assessments (including edTPA) has a positive effect on the preparation of teachers as a "test worth teaching to" (Shulman, 2007).Programs that take an inquiry approach to preparing new teachers find ways to embed edTPA related constructs formatively, portray what edTPA measures as what good teachers do, and use edTPA as a potential lever for addressing long standing problems of practice in teacher preparation.

edTPA as a Positive Disruption
For decades, teacher preparation has been vexed by critique and seemingly unsolvable problems of practice -a revolving door of leadership, individualized faculty interests at odds with program coherence, unreliable or inconsistent local assessment practices (Feuer, Floden, Chudowsky, & Ahn, 2013), separation of coursework from clinical experience, short clinical experiences with stress-inducing requirements, and fractured communication and partnerships with P-12.edTPA is not designed to solve these problems, but it has certainly put a bright spotlight on them.And as a "common object" for program focus, use of edTPA has served as a catalyst to begin to address problems of practice.In the remaining sections, we offer some counter examples of the problems of practice illuminated in the articles in this volume and close with some "lessons learned" by programs using edTPA educatively.

Claim: edTPA Narrows Curriculum and is a Subtractive Experience
Yes, edTPA could result in narrowing curriculum if programs embrace a compliance orientation and faculty promote edTPA as mandating a single approach to instruction rather than opportunities for inquiry and reflection on teaching practice in light of student learning.

Counter Argument: edTPA is Contextualized and Supports Program Goals
Given that hundreds of teachers and teacher educators were engaged in the development of edTPA, we would like some concrete examples that support unspecified critique and rhetoric that edTPA "took away from the student teaching experience" and that practicum and student teaching seminar faculty felt "torn between conceptions of good teaching" and supporting "students to do well on the assessment" (Donovan& Cannon, this volume).Which aspects of good teaching are left out?
edTPA does not require a single theoretical or conceptual approach to teaching (other than requiring a focus for student learning that goes beyond facts and skills).Sources of evidence required for edTPA are authentic job related artifacts of teaching (lesson plans, student work, instructional materials) and reflective commentaries that focus on candidate experiences in real classrooms.Candidates are asked to think about and explain how THEIR lesson plans are developed for their students in their real teaching context.Candidates determine the objectives and standards for student learning based on what they know about their students and what is expected of them in local contexts, and to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching in relation to student learning.Candidates are required to develop, adapt or choose the assessments best suited to their learning objectives and students' needs.In addition, in the instruction task, candidates analyze videorecordings of their teaching and identify and explain evidence of subject specific instructional practices aligned to their learning objectives cited in their lesson plans and to their teaching context.
For example, in the Secondary Mathematics handbook, candidates are prompted as follows: Depending on the clinical placement and knowledge of students, there are many ways for candidates to demonstrate and justify their practices related to these prompts that would be fully consistent with individual program mission and values within each content area.The placement is chosen by the preparation program and candidates justify their instructional decisions based on what they have learned in the local program -they apply pedagogical frameworks learned in methods courses, and justify what they do based on the theories and conceptual rationale reinforced throughout their program.If the program views edTPA as a compliance measure, opportunities for reflection and analysis are greatly diminished despite the fact that the teacher lesson plans and teaching artifacts provided as evidence for edTPA are grounded in the specific choices prospective teachers make to meet their learning objectives.
We recognize that in the high stakes context some programs make compliance oriented decisions instead of embracing inquiry as the central focus of edTPA.For example, we have seen programs replace or modify existing seminars to offer edTPA "boot camps" and other unnecessary edTPA "triage-based" preparation that don't allow much time for reflection on pedagogical decisions.Under these conditions, candidates are pressured to, in effect, "get it right" anticipating some "right pedagogical strategy hidden in edTPA" rather than trust the quality of their preparation program and the expertise of faculty.Although we support the idea that candidates should be

Engaging Students in Learning
Refer to examples from the video clip(s) in your responses to the prompts.2. Describe how your instruction linked students' prior academic learning and personal, cultural, and/or community assets with new learning.

Deepening Student Learning during Instruction
Refer to examples from the video clip(s) in your explanations.
1. Explain how you elicited and built on student responses to promote thinking and develop conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, AND mathematical reasoning and/or problem-solving skills.
2. Explain how you used representations to support students' understanding and use of mathematical concepts and procedures.
oriented to the requirements of the assessment, we also advocate that it be done in the context of the program coursework and clinical experiences that address "good teaching" and that faculty can and should collectively determine how their existing curriculum prepares candidates for what edTPA can and cannot measure.For example, prior to adopting the assessment faculty at University of Tennessee, Knoxville strategically reviewed and critiqued edTPA handbooks and rubrics in relation to their program's conceptual framework.Following their edTPA pilot, "UTK gave edTPA data summaries to faculty and used candidate performance information to revise programs and refine existing assignments while maintaining the program vision.At UTK, edTPA is not the focus in coursework.Rather teacher candidates plan around essential questions, incorporate academic language as a major focus of lesson planning, and deepen their use of community mapping to understand student strengths/challenges, culture, and community effect on learning."(Pecheone & Whittaker, 2016, page 11).

Claim: edTPA Measures More Than Teaching
Several of the articles in this volume make a claim that the reliability and validity of edTPA is questionable, and some critics claim edTPA is an assessment of writing skills and that candidates whose writing is weak will not be successful on edTPA; or that edTPA measures dispositions and skills unrelated to teaching.
Counter Argument: edTPA is a Valid Assessment of Teaching edTPA has consistently met or exceeded the APA, AERA, NCME standards (2014) for validity and reliability of assessments used for licensure.Our Field Test Summary Report (SCALE, 2013) and numerous state level technical reports set the stage for operational use of edTPA in 2014, and annual administrative reports (SCALE, 2015(SCALE, , 2016(SCALE, , 2017) ) continue to demonstrate that scoring is carried out consistently, the constructs measured are grounded in job related practices affirmed by the field, and the three task model (Planning, Instruction, Assessment) represents three factors that together inform a total score demonstrating effective beginning teacher practice.Numerous states have reviewed state, national and local data to determine a passing standard that represents the level of knowledge and skill they expect for teachers entering their state as beginners (see SCALE, 2017, for the latest information on passing standards) and are using edTPA evidence as a bridge to induction program support.
Critics of edTPA often ask if we established "predictive validity" for edTPA.We are beginning to see some evidence that edTPA is predictive of future teaching effectiveness now that there are a few years of data in hand.Our policy is if states have the technical ability to match edTPA performance to student learning in practice we will support studies of predictive validity.We have been following a few published studies (using pilot, local evaluation or first year edTPA data in WA and NC) and these studies are cited in the 2015 and 2016 Administrative Reports (see Bastian, Henry, Pan, & Lys, 2015;SCALE, 2016SCALE, , 2017)).We have also cited a preliminary study from Tennessee that demonstrated data associating edTPA performance and teacher evaluation ratings (by principals) combined with student achievement.The results of these studies are consistent with similar research on the National Board and are quite promising; however, most use value added methodology (VAM) which has been criticized by researchers for its sole reliance on standardized test scores.VAM results should be interpreted with caution given that so many contextualized school and district variables are not controlled for in the current studies.Multiple measures approaches will be the most useful for understanding predictive validity of edTPA and we encourage programs to partner with their states to provide information that allows these studies to be carried out longitudinally.
edTPA is designed as an assessment of pedagogy and scorers are trained and monitored to ensure that writing quality does not bias a scoring decision.Indeed, it is an assessment of reflection on practice --it's about the evidence candidates provide --long elaborate prose is not required.Candidates can use bullet points to identify evidence and to justify their decisions in reflective commentaries.To date there is no empirical evidence that candidates with weak writing skills do poorly on edTPA.In fact, a recent unpublished study indicates otherwise (Zack, 2017).In one large midwestern teacher preparation program, after the initial pilot year faculty found no correlation between edTPA performance and the standardized test of writing required of candidates at entry.It is interesting that there was a positive correlation during the pilot year that disappeared once the assessment was consequential.The researcher surmised that once program faculty were more familiar with edTPA and what it measured, candidates were better prepared to demonstrate those outcomes with evidence from their teaching regardless of writing ability.
Lastly, our ongoing analyses presented in the collection of annual reports reveals improved performance on edTPA in most fields, on most rubrics, and for all demographic groups over time.We have seen a consistent pattern of equivalent performance for White and Hispanic candidates as well as those who identify their primary language as English or other languages.For the past 3 years, our annual administrative reports have found small (yet statistically significant differences due to very large or disproportionate sample sizes) in candidate performance based on a variety of variables (e.g., suburban and urban candidates outperform those in rural contexts, female candidates outperform their male counterparts, Asian candidates outperform all other groups, and African American and Native American candidates have lower overall scores than White and Hispanic peers).But overall, regression analyses consistently reveal that the combined set of demographic variables explain less than four percent of the variability in candidate performance.That means that the other 96% of the variance is based on something else -perhaps the quality of their teaching or possibly the quality of their preparation.We encourage programs to track candidate performance by subgroup and continue to examine any trends based on prior academic experience, GPA, clinical teaching success in varied placements and other variables.And, to monitor attrition data within a multiple measures system to ensure that underrepresented candidates have the support they need to be successful throughout the program and actually make it to the capstone experience of edTPA.

Claim: edTPA Increases Candidate Workload and Stress
Perceptions about workload are real-learning to teach is stressful and managing edTPA within student teaching is complex, especially when candidates are juggling home, life and other employment responsibilities.As with any profession, preparation for license and demonstrating evidence of one's competency is stressful.Learning to teach is no less complex than learning to be a doctor or lawyer (perhaps more so?) and teacher preparation programs, like medical and law schools, vary in their requirements, as well as access to resources to support that preparation.However, ultimately all prospective candidates must meet the same standards and threshold level of competence.
Most teacher education programs have always had capstone or culminating assignments (portfolios, action research, etc.) embedded in the final phases of the clinical experience and these projects are always stressful to candidates.In fact, many of the claims in the articles in this volume, sound a lot like what we have heard from programs prior to the adoption of edTPA or any TPA or capstone requirement-while previous local portfolio assignments may not have been externally scored, they have long been used for making "high stakes" decisions for program completion and accreditation.Productive struggle is embedded in the job of teaching and in learning to teach.Becoming a competent professional takes work-edTPA is asking candidates to do what is expected of them on the job and to develop a mindset that teaching is a reflective and iterative practice.Programs can take action to reduce this stress by supporting edTPA in educative ways and trusting that their preparation program is well designed and will prepare candidates to be successful on edTPA without corrupting their curriculum.

Counter Argument: Program and Faculty Attitudes toward edTPA Matter
Given state parameters, programs make decisions about the quality, frequency and length of clinical experiences and the timing for submitting edTPA.Short placements, limited opportunities for teaching (sometimes merely observing and assisting) and premature due dates for edTPA all increase stress and contribute to a compliance orientation"I'll just get edTPA off my plate so I can teach" versus "I'll apply what I have learned throughout my program to develop the artifacts and reflective commentaries that demonstrate the quality of my teaching" (as required by edTPA).
That said, seeing edTPA as a hurdle and only a tool for compliance with state regulations exacerbates the stress and diminishes the educative intent of edTPA.A recent dissertation (Lin, 2015) examined candidates' perceptions and learning from edTPA.When candidates viewed edTPA as a high stakes endeavor, they did not see its value.However, when they viewed the assessment as a useful tool for learning they revealed insights about how program coursework was connected to their actual teaching -including the importance of activating background knowledge, and differentiating instruction.For example, one candidate reported that edTPA provided "… a big learning moment for me as a teacher about differentiating and really making it look doable right off the get-go for them" (Lin, 2015, p. 69).
The articles in this volume often focus on the experience of candidates while they are taking edTPA.What is also needed are long term studies of the impact on candidates' effectiveness in classrooms, retention rates, success during induction programs, etc., using qualitative approaches in additional to value added studies.For example, Brown, Hagood, & Wetherington (2016), discussed the positive effects of edTPA for first and second year teachers when faculty framed the assessment as a reflective process to develop a portfolio of evidence of their teaching.During their first years in the classroom, graduates reflected back on their edTPA experience and commented that doing edTPA was a lot of work but in the end, it was a valuable experience that continues to inform their practice-especially how they use knowledge of their students and assessment evidence to plan differentiated instruction and build upon students' strengths.These outcomes were possible and recognized by candidates because of the ways in which faculty approached edTPA-not as a hoop to jump through for licensure but as a mindset for thinking about teaching and learning.Further, as noted by Adkins, 2016, the edTPA experience in hindsight reveals its educative value -commented one candidate -"Although I didn't realize it at the time, going through edTPA prepared me to show evidence of my professional practice, assess my students' learning and respond appropriately, support my students' learning, and keep my students at the center of my instructional decisions.This assessment enabled me to show what I could do as a teacher and that I was ready to have my own classroom."That is exactly what we developed edTPA to do.

Lessons of Practice for Educative Implementation
Based on our partnerships with hundreds of teacher educators using edTPA, the feedback they have provided, and 10 years of implementation conference presentations by programs using PACT and edTPA, we offer a collection of practices that reduce compliance approaches that increase stress and dissatisfaction and support inquiry.Over the past five years of edTPA use across the country, we have witnessed a clear shift from compliance (how do we DO edTPA?) to inquiry (what can we learn about our practice and what are the connections to what edTPA measures)?These practices draw upon the scholarship of Charles Peck and colleagues (Peck, Gallucci, & Sloan, 2010;Peck, Gallucci, Sloan, & Lippincott, 2009;Peck & McDonald, 2013;Peck, Singer-Gabella, Sloan, & Lin, 2014;Sloan, 2013), who have emphasized the value of teacher performance assessments that provide actionable evidence to support faculty inquiry and programmatic change as well as the importance of local decision making within the high stakes contexts.In closing, we offer the following recommended practices.

Distributed Leadership
Programs can mediate the negative consequences of high stakes requirements, including edTPA.Such mediation requires strong leadership and cannot be the sole burden of clinical faculty who are closest to candidates when edTPA is in its final stages of completion.Educative implementation requires distributed leadership from deans, directors, and faculty with a shared vision for teaching and learning across the program.As Fayne and Qian (2016) point out, "It would be foolhardy for educator preparation unit administrators … to allow faculty to take a laissez-faire attitude and assume that candidates will figure out on their own how to succeed on a high-stakes assessment."In contrast, Barron (2015), Sloan (2013) and Miller et al (2015) recognize the challenge and power of leading change within a culture of inquiry and the benefits of performance based assessments as a common lever for improving teacher education.

Allow Time for Strategic Implementation
Educative implementation of a high stakes assessment through distributed leadership and faculty engagement doesn't happen overnight.In 2014, SCALE produced a set of implementation recommendations for states setting edTPA policy (SCALE, 2014), including a period of low stakes use prior to consequential policy.The guidelines suggest a two-to-three-year timeline that encourages educator preparation programs to learn about edTPA and to take full advantage of the numerous support resources available prior to any high stakes use.Programs should take advantage of the professional development offered by our National Academy of consultants or explore resources for handbook "deep dives", protocols for local evaluation and curriculum inquiry on their own.

Build a Professional Learning Community with Faculty and P-12 Partners
With or without edTPA, preparing preservice candidates for success requires strong partnerships and clear communication about expectations with P-12 partners.Some programs using edTPA have strengthened partnerships by providing local evaluation training to cooperating teachers and principals in professional development school contexts.Others have provided access to online webinars introducing edTPA; invited teachers to "dine and discuss" events to review previous candidate edTPA portfolios, to "data summits" to review candidate performance, or to participate in celebrations with candidates after completing the assessment.Further, building from the work of our partners at University of Maryland, College Park, many programs are using the "professional growth plan" resource to communicate candidate strengths and needs (based on edTPA and other sources of evidence) to make informed decisions about support during the early years of teaching.For these programs, the collaborative engagement with P-12 partners is not about "passing edTPA", but using the assessment and its associated resources to strengthen the profession.

Maintain Key Features of Program Mission and Values
Throughout PACT and edTPA development, SCALE sought input from numerous scholars in urban education, social justice, and academic literacy and conducted bias and sensitivity reviews with diverse representation.Our focus on personal, cultural, and community assets, language development and support, differentiation, and components of deeper learning are highly consistent with equitable and culturally relevant practices.Early in edTPA's development, scholars from University of Maryland conducted studies mapping edTPA commentary prompts and rubrics to Gloria Ladson Billings culturally relevant practices framework (Hyler, 2015) and found significant overlap, especially at the higher levels of the rubrics.At first glance, programs may not see these connections explicitly, so we invite faculty to take a closer look at their own program mission and values, interrogate the language of edTPA and identify how/where it already aligns with existing program coursework.Not to reconfigure what you do to ensure candidates pass, but to maintain the program's mission and values.No single assessment no matter how well developed can adequately assess the full range of teaching competence.Therefore, programs must not abandon a holistic vision of effective teaching aligned to their mission and values and should continue to systematically collect evidence of effective practice for the full range of expected outcomes.

Develop State Policies that Honor Multiple Measures
As noted in the opening of this response, states can and do establish teacher licensing policies that include multiple measures-candidates must continue to pass content and basic skills tests, maintain a particular GPA during coursework, and be successful in student teaching based on local measures.Although use of edTPA is additive and conjunctive in most states, New York recently added a safety net for a compensatory system and Wisconsin did the same at the time edTPA became consequential.In both cases, candidates whose edTPA performance is close to the passing score requirement can be reviewed by the local program and, if there is compelling evidence that the candidate has been successful on all other measures, a licensure recommendation goes forward to the state.These policy strategies embrace other sources of evidence of teaching effectiveness that can be used in conjunction with scores on edTPA to make a licensure decision.These policies can reduce educator stress and promote an inquiry approach to implementation.
In closing, we encourage programs using edTPA to continue thoughtful scholarship that both critiques and affirms educative implementation.During our most recent national implementation conference in November 2017, more than 330 teacher educators from 29 states presented their research and best practices revealing how edTPA has been both a challenging and valuable lever for change and, perhaps more importantly -how they have become part of a large networked community of professional practice supporting teacher education.

Kendyll Stansbury
Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) kendylls@stanford.eduKendyll Stansbury received her doctorate in education from Stanford University.She currently is an assessment specialist at SCALE with 30 years of experience in teacher assessment.She began her career in assessment by piloting, analyzing, and comparing assessments for teachers in induction programs for WestEd and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.She has worked on developing assessments for experienced teachers seeking to add an authorization to teach English learners for WestEd, and now works on developing preservice teacher and experienced teacher assessments for SCALE.She has also worked on developing student assessments for vocational students and science students.

About the Guest Editors
Elena Aydarova Auburn University eza0029@auburn.eduWebsite: https://elenaaydarova.comElena Aydarova is Assistant Professor of Social Foundations at the Department of Educational

1.
Explain how your instruction engaged students in developing a. conceptual understanding, b. procedural fluency, AND c. mathematical reasoning and/or problem-solving skills.
Foundations, Leadership, and Technology at Auburn University.Her interdisciplinary research examines the interactions between global social change and the work of teachers, teaching, and teacher education through the lens of equity and social justice.Her projects have explored teacher education reforms in Russia and the US, internationalization of education, teacher retention, as well as privatization of teacher preparation.She has recently completed a book manuscript "Teacher Education Reforms as Political Theater: Policy Dramas in Neoliberal Contexts."Throughout her career, Dr. Aydarova has taught in the United States, Ukraine, China, and the United Arab Emirates.David C. Berliner Arizona State University berliner@asu.eduDavid C. Berliner is Regents' Professor Emeritus of Education at Arizona State University.Dr. Berliner is a member of the National Academy of Education (NEA), the International Education Academy (IEA), a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a past president of both the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA).He is the recipient of awards for distinguished contributions from APA, AERA, and the National Education Association (NEA).Dr. Berliner is co-author (with B. J. Biddle) of the best seller The Manufactured Crisis, co-author (with Ursula Casanova) of Putting Research to Work, coauthor (with Gene Glass) of 50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America's Public Schools, and co-author (with N. L. Gage) of six editions of the textbook Educational Psychology.He is co-editor of the first Handbook of Educational Psychology and the books Talks to Teachers, and Perspectives on Instructional Time.Professor Berliner has also authored more than 200 published articles, technical reports, and book chapters.He has taught at the University of Arizona, University of Massachusetts, Teachers College and Stanford University, as well as universities in Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.
on the faculty of the College of Education at San José State University where she taught courses in literacy, multicultural and psychological foundations, and assessment.Andrea's research interests include teaching standards and assessment, professional development and teacher education policies and practice.Professor of Practice at Stanford University and the founder and Executive Director of the Stanford Center for Assessment Learning, and Equity (SCALE), which focuses on the development of innovative performance assessments for students, teachers and administrators at the school, district and state levels.Pecheone's leadership as Co -director of the first Assessment Development Lab for the National Board Professional Teach ing Standards was instrumental in developing the framework for the assessment highly accomplished teaching.Pecheone and Linda Darling Hammond chaired a policy group that established the INTASC teaching standards and situated the program within the Counsel of Chief State School Officers.Currently, Dr. Pecheone and SCALE lead the development and implementation of edTPA, which is used in 40 states and over 750 IHEs nationally.