Facing a teacher shortage, Texas considers a more rigorous teacher certification exam

By Brian Lopez 

At a time when more Texas teachers are leaving the classroom, the state’s licensing board is considering a new certification exam that could help better prepare new teachers — and perhaps help keep them longer in the job.

On Friday, the 11-member State Board for Educator Certification will vote on whether to adopt the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment, also known as the edTPA exam. This new licensing test, developed at Stanford University, requires teachers to submit answers to essay questions and provide a sample lesson plan, a 15-minute video of themselves teaching in the classroom and a report on their students’ progress.

If approved, the move would mean ditching the old Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities exam, a test of 100 multiple choice questions that has been in use since 2002.

“This is about how we make sure that those [teacher] candidates are getting the support and coaching that they need and they deserve to be effective and to stay in the profession,” said Jonathan Feinstein, state director of The Education Trust, which advocates for historically underserved students.

The edTPA will especially be a boost for alternative certification programs, he said, which sent nearly 50% of the newly certified teachers into the classroom during the 2020-21 year, according to data from the Texas Education Agency.

Two months ago, John P. Kelly, who sits on the state’s teacher certification board, called this exam vote a “very momentous” decision.

“I’ve been praying and hoping that we would reach a conclusion that is best for the teachers and the students of this great state,” Kelly said. If the test is adopted at Friday’s board meeting, the State Board of Education would still have to approve it at its next meeting in June before it could go into effect.

Critics of the PPR teacher certification exam have pointed out its makeup is a less-than-precise way of testing a new teacher’s potential. All 100 questions on the test are multiple choice, making it easier to pass.

Frank Ward, spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency, called the current exam a “flawed” measure of teacher readiness. “Fortunately, there’s a proven alternative,” he said “[The] edTPA goes well beyond asking questions that aren’t designed to demonstrate how effective a teacher will be in his or her first year in the classroom.”

If the edTPA is approved Friday and then by the State Board of Education, with a vote most likely taking place in June, it will start as an optional test in 2022-23. It will be required as a pass/fail exam in 2023-24 and fully implemented in 2024-25.

Not everyone is a fan, though.

At least 17 states use the edTPA as their required certification exam. In 21 others, the edTPA is used as an option for teacher preparation programs. It is more expensive, costing nearly $200 more than the current Texas teacher’s licensing exam, which experts say creates another barrier.

In two instances, the edTPA has been adopted as a statewide exam and then scrapped altogether.

In New York, Black test-takers were nearly twice as likely to fail the edTPA compared with their white or Hispanic peers. The state recently stopped using the exam, saying students were trying to finish the edTPA requirements rather than learning from student teaching, and they found it challenging to complete the multifaceted aspect of it.

In Washington state, a 2016 study showed Hispanic teacher candidates were more than three times as likely to fail the exam when compared with white candidates. The state scrapped the exam last year.