Professional organizations such as INTASC, NB, and PESB “developed standards based not only on what teachers needed to know, but also on what they needed to be able to do” (Sandholtz & Shea, 2011, p. 40). These standards became the basis for designing assessments that could measure whether a candidate was ready to teach. Standards for teaching performance are not contentious. However, the best way to evaluate candidate knowledge, disposition, and performance differs and informed experts disagree (Youngs, Odden, & Porter, 2003).
3 These requirements changed in 2014. This reflects standards during the field test. Teachers with a valid teaching license from another state, and at least three years of teaching experience, can also apply.
The rise of performance assessment corresponds to an evaluation movement advocating criterion-based, or standards, assessment rather than norm-based assessment (Kane, Crooks, & Cohen, 1999; Taylor, 1994). Many educators and researchers questioned decisions based on relative or comparative measurement. The goal is to make sure all candidates meet standard, regardless of whether their peers also meet standard (Taylor, 1994). Grant Wiggins (1989) critiqued the use of norm-referenced tests to assess whether a student met a standard. Instead, he proposed designing and using performance assessments as more authentic assessments of learning. His call convinced many educators to adopt performance assessment to evaluate student understanding and rapidly spread from classroom practice to teacher preparation.
Building on curricular changes in teacher education programs that emphasized knowledge, skills, and dispositions in terms of situated learning and constructivism, professional preparation promoted a view of teachers who “must adapt their teaching to meet the diverse and changing needs of students in their classrooms” (Sandholtz & Shea, 2011, p. 40). This “variability of context, combined with complexity of teaching, has shifted the view of the teacher to ‘a thinking, decision- making, reflective, and autonomous professional’” (Sandholtz & Shea, 2011, p. 40). Advocates of teaching, as a highly-skilled profession, argue that both learning and readiness to teach is contextual. Therefore, objective pencil-and-paper measurements do not evaluate teachers’ practice in context are no longer sufficient for licensure decisions which led to the adoption of performance
assessments, or assessments that include tasks that “elicit complex demonstrations of learning and measure the full range of knowledge and skills necessary” to address the construct (PARCC, 2010, p. 35).
Teacher learning in training is now widely perceived to involve real-world problem solving and the application of teaching practices that adapt to meet the changing needs of students in authentic classrooms. In the 1980s, Georgia, Florida and Texas were early adopters of teacher- performance assessments. However, these assessments were too standardized and focused on a uniform set of behaviors and strategies that all teachers should perform, regardless of the
situational context of their teaching placement (Youngs, Odden, and Porter, 2003). Therefore, a new generation of performance assessments were designed that applied observation of teaching practice embedded within the classroom context where candidates can demonstrate that they were
responsive to the learning needs of every student and reflect on their professional knowledge and skills, specifically in the context of observed taught lessons. Schools of education in WA have an established history of evaluating teachers and recommending licensure based upon observed evidence of knowledge in practice, this expectation was imbedded in the PPA adopted in 2004.
Because they are more authentic, performance assessments are considered more valid for licensure decisions than tests that focus only on knowledge, or on simulated practice, with multiple- choice or essay questions (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000). Performance assessments of teacher readiness have been promoted as stronger in content validity (Popham, 2005; Popham, 1990), more effective in shaping teaching habits of mind (Fenderson, 2010) and a more authentic approach to assessing candidate knowledge, skills, and judgments than standardized, multiple-choice tests which may over-simplify professional teaching activities or offer multiple “right” responses for various teaching contexts (Cochran-Smith, 2003; Darling-Hammond, 2001).4 Performance, as a teacher readiness assessment method, has many benefits, depending on established validity, reliability, and
4 Conversely and controversially, Sackett, Borneman, and Connelly (2008) found that the predictive measures of success from standardized testing used for employment and decisions in higher education were strongly “supported by the preponderance of the evidence” (p. 225). Upending some of the major
assumptions about high-stakes, standardized tests, they write, “We offer a very positive appraisal for the evidence (a) that tests of developed abilities are generally valid for their intended uses in predicting a wide variety of aspects of short-term and long-term academic and job performance, (b) that validity is not an artifact of SES, (c) that coaching is not a major determinant of test performance, (d) that tests do not generally exhibit bias by underpredicting the performance of minority group members, and (e) that test taking
motivation mechanisms are not major determinants of test performance in these high-stakes settings” (p. 225).
fairness. The aim of performance assessment is to “replicate what candidates encounter in a real work situation and determine competence by judging their performance in the actual tasks and activities” (Sandholtz & Shea, 2011, p. 40). One benefit is that these assessments are linked to professional teaching standards that represent a high degree of consensus around the domain of effective teaching (Arends, 2006; Wiggins & McTighe, 2000). As mentioned above, unlike traditional assessments, another benefit of performance assessment is that it measures evidence of teacher practice. This is a more direct method to evaluate teacher readiness (Kane, Crooks, & Cohen, 1999). “The focus shifts from determining a candidate’s possession of knowledge and skills to determining the way in which a candidate uses his or her knowledge, skills, and dispositions in teaching and learning contexts” (Sandholtz & Shea, 2011, p. 40). As predictors of success in work settings, direct methods of assessment have been thought to provide stronger evidence than indirect tests (Uhlenbeck, Verloop, & Beijaard, 2002). Decisions made about the quality of candidates are less subjective because the data is based on more credible evidence (Arends, 2006). Finally, in addition to the data they provide for decision-making, performance assessment can provide opportunities for formative professional development and offer education programs valuable feedback on their strengths and weaknesses for programmatic improvement (Sandholtz & Shea, 2011, p. 40; Schultz, 2002; King, 1991).