Education Week - December 3, 2014 - 6

New Teacher-Licensing Exams in N.Y. Lead to Subpar Results
Wide variation seen
across institutions
For now, licensing fewer teachers
By Stephen Sawchuk
A battery of new licensing tests in
New York has led to relatively low
passing rates for prospective teachers,
according to data issued by the state
education department.
During the 2013-14 testing cycle,
68 percent of candidates passed an
exam measuring their grasp of key
English/language arts concepts in
the Common Core State Standards,
and 77 percent passed an exam focused
on pedagogy for teaching English-language
learners and students
with disabilities.
Empire State teacher-candidates
did better on the Teacher Performance
Assessment, or edtpa, a national exam
that uses videos in part to measure
classroom teaching skills, with 81 percent
of them passing.
Pass rates on state licensing tests
typically fall in the 90 percent to 100
percent range.
The results, released last month,
shine a spotlight on New York's strategy
of using licensing tests as one lever
for improving teacher preparation-
even as they raise questions about
school staffing in the state. New York
has a surplus of teachers, especially
at the elementary certification level,
but enrollments in the state's teacherpreparation
programs have fallen.
might not be a bad thing, said John
B. King Jr., the state's education
commissioner.
"What's striking in the data is the
placement rates [of teachers] are
very low. Our challenge is not that
we have an undersupply of teachers;
we have an oversupply, and too little
rigor," he said.
Still, the results raised the ire of faculty
unions, which contend the new
tests were rolled out without enough
time for programs and teacher candidates
to adjust.
Varied Results
The three exams-the edtpa, the
Educating All Students exam, and
the Academic Literacy Skills Test-
were put in place between 2009 and
2012. Teacher-candidates in New
York must take all three, plus content
exams, in order to be licensed.
"We wanted to have a comprehensive
approach that requires
all of those different components,"
Mr. King said. "We've seen already
some important shifts in practice in
teacher-preparation institutions; certainly
the edtpa has increased focus
on clinical preparation and the use of
video to analyze teaching practice."
Across the United States, about 96
percent of teacher-candidates pass
their licensing tests, according to federal
data. (Those results are considered
to be somewhat inflated, though,
because they usually represent only
program completers, not all enrolled
candidates.)
New York's scores were also broken
out by institution, and they showed
great variation among teaching programs.
Teachers College, Columbia
"
The assessments have
not been adequately
tested or subjected to
validity and reliability
studies. ... The results
unfairly characterize
teacher education
students and
programs."
JAMIE DANGLER
United University Professions
University, for example, had passing
rates on the exams above 90 percent;
Touro College, among the largest
education schools in the state, had a
29 percent passing rate on the edtpa
and passing rates of 51 percent and
61 percent on the other two tests.
While the differences across institutions
could be a reflection of varied
curricular approaches or the colleges'
particular orientation toward the
new exams, they may also reflect the
demographics of the candidates attending
the colleges.
Historically, minority candidates
have tended to post lower scores on
licensing tests. According to accounts
cited in a New York Times story, some
of the state's teacher colleges say
they've noticed that dynamic in the
scores for their institutions, too.
Faculty Pushback
Much debate in the state has focused
on the edtpa.
Teacher-educators in the state
have had concerns about that exam
both because of its quick rollout-it
was selected in 2012 to substitute
for a state-crafted version-and
because of the role of Pearson, the
giant testing company, in overseeing
the scoring process.
Partly in response to those concerns,
New York delayed the date by
which all teacher-candidates must
pass the exam until July 1, 2015.
So far, there has been no action to
defer consequences on the two other
exams, something that irks United
University Professions, a faculty
union that counts 17 State University
of New York campuses that
prepare teachers among its members.
The union had filed several
open-records requests to obtain the
scoring data, which appear at least
in part to have prompted the state's
decision to release it.
"The assessments have not been
adequately tested or subjected to
validity and reliability studies. They
are not ready for prime time," said
Jamie Dangler, the vice president for
academics at the union. "The results
unfairly characterize teacher education
students and programs."
Ms. Dangler said some teacher education
faculty signed up to take the
tests themselves last summer to get
a better grasp on the content.
"It is extremely poor policymaking
to base any decisions on the performance
of this first group of students,
who have really been the guinea pigs
in a very incompetently rolled out set
of exams," she said.
But Sharon P. Robinson, the president
of the American Association
of Colleges for Teacher Education,
praised the state for pushing forward
with a "gutsy, courageous" plan to be
among the first states to require the
edtpa for all teachers, and for setting
a high cutoff score on the test.
She said the overall strong results
on the edtpa are proof that the state's
efforts to help colleges understand
the exam paid off. Now, both the state
and programs need to start thinking
about how they can use the results to
improve their programming.
With the data release, "[the scores]
are out there," Ms. Robinson said.
"Talk about being in the center ring,
in the spotlight, on the high wire."
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