Problems of Implementation in the Teacher Credentialing Requirements
or California’s Teacher Performance Assessment

Nena Torrez
California State University, San Bernardino

New Elementary School Teacher Credentialing Requirements in California

   As a response to the No Child Let Behind federal legislation and other accountability pressures, the state of California, through the passage of Senate Bill 2042 (SB 2042), set the wheels in motion to revamp the credentialing system that had existed in various iterations since the mid 1960’s. There had been some revamping in the mid 1980’s to include the CBEST - California Basic Educational Skills Test or entry level teachers, and some retooling of course work in the early 1990’s to include a specific emphasis on the effects of culture and second language acquisition on the learning and development of students. Contained in the requirements of SB2042 s is the Reading Instruction Competencies Assessment (RICA) examination, inserted as a prerequisite to an elementary school teaching credential.

   The history of education during the past 40 years, 1960-2000, in both California and the United States has been one of tremendous growth and change in the demographics of student populations. Initially, these trends were experienced primarily in large urban centers and particularly in California As such, trends in California are a viable harbinger or the future of education across the United States. Recent changes have included increasing percentages of non-English speaking students, immigrant students, students rom families with two working parents, single parent households, and students living in government sponsored placements. Although none of these actors is necessarily predictive of or correlated with academic failure, the increase in the types and variety of student characteristics has not been mirrored in the teacher candidate population or their experience base.

   The rise in technology, such as Game Boys, the Internet, and Play Stations, et al. has also impacted the lived experiences of the students who enter elementary school classrooms. Coupling these actors with the increase in identified students with physical, psycho-social behavioral, emotional, and other conditions that effect the individual student’s ability to learn in the standard classroom, one can begin to analyze the status of student learning, teacher competencies, and their intersection in the preparation and licensure of elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States.

   This paper will hocus exclusively on California’s response to the changing demographics of students and the mandates of state and federal educational policies. But California’s response has import on the evolving state of education in communities everywhere. English as a Second Language and the construction of taquerias are now realities in states such as North Carolina and Nebraska. The changes in education necessary or the success of all students must be addressed across the United States.

California and Senate Bill 2042

Senate Bill 2042 (Chapter 548, Statutes of 1998), signed by the governor in 1998, requires all multiple and single subject preliminary credential candidates attending teacher preparation programs in California to pass a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA). The assessment is designed to provide teacher candidates with the opportunity to develop, refine, and demonstrate their teaching knowledge, skills, and abilities during their teacher preparation program.

The TPA is imbedded in university coursework and is designed to be both formative and summative. It is also linked to the California state-adopted academic content standards or students (available at www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/index.asp), the California Standards or the Teaching Profession (33 page document adopted in 1997 available at www.ctc.ca.gov/reports/cstpreport.pdf) and the California frameworks (available at www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/c/allwks.asp). The TPA is part of a three-year preparation cycle of growth and development or new teachers. All teacher candidates must take and pass the TPA in order to be recommended or a Preliminary Teaching Credential. At er receiving the Preliminary Credential, and upon employment within a California public school classroom, all beginning California teacher candidates will participate in an approved induction program leading to a Professional Credential. The results of the TPA will inform the Individual Induction Plan (IIP). Completing the TPA will allow new teachers to begin using the California formative Assessment and Support System, CASST (www.btsa.ca.gov/), or another assessment system, during induction.

All California TPA materials and information are publicly available. A candidate will have the opportunity to review the tasks and rubrics before taking the assessment. The formative aspect allows the candidate to confer with, collaborate with, and receive support from both instructors and peers while preparing or the California TPA. To complete the assessment, each candidate submits an individual response.

California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the CA TPA

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) (www.ctc.ca.gov/), along with ETS (Educational Testing Service) and the educational community, have developed the CA TPA. This performance assessment measures the domains of the Teaching Performance Expectations (TPEs) that describe what California teachers need to know and be able to do before being recommended or a Preliminary Credential. All approved California teacher preparation programs introduce prospective teacher candidates to the TPEs and provide their students with multiple opportunities to become familiar with them.

   The CCTC developed, through rigorous research and consultation with California educators, a set of knowledge, skills, and abilities that beginning teachers should be able to demonstrate. The TPEs are organized into six domains.

Teaching Performance Expectations

1. Making Subject Matter Comprehensible to Students
   • TPE 1 - Specific Pedagogical Skills or Subject Matter Instruction
2. Assessing Student Learning
   • TPE 2 - Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction 
   • TPE 3 - Interpretation and Use of Assessments
3. Engaging and Supporting Students in Learning
   • TPE 4 - Making Content Accessible
   • TPE 5 - Student Engagement 
   • TPE 6 - Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Practices
   • TPE 7 - Teaching English Learners
4. Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences or Students
   • TPE 8 - Learning About Students
   • TPE 9 - Instructional Planning
5. Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments or Student Learning
   • TPE 10 - Instructional Time
   • TPE 11 - Social Environment
6. Developing as a Professional Educator
   • TPE 12 – Professional, Legal, and Ethical Obligations
   • TPE 13 - Professional Growth

   Teaching is both complex and interactive, and so the California Teaching Performance Assessment is necessarily multidimensional. Aspects of specific TPEs are measured in each task and are listed in the directions or each task. The complete text of the TPEs is listed and can also be downloaded rom the CCTC web site www.ctc.ca.gov/.

Overview of the Teaching Performance Assessment Tasks

The California Teaching Performance Assessment (CA TPA) tasks are designed to measure aspects of the TPEs and to reflect what beginning teachers should know and be able to do before receiving a Preliminary Credential. The CCTC, ETS, and professional teacher educators rom California teacher preparation programs designed and tested a pilot and a field review version of the our performance tasks to ensure that the final CA TPA tasks would be air and equitable or teaching credential candidates. There are our inter-related yet separate tasks that increase in complexity. They were designed with a specific sequence in mind. As the tasks increase in complexity, there are more choices and decisions to make about how to respond to the prompts. Each performance task measures aspects of a number of TPEs, and many TPEs are measured in more than one task.

The four tasks are:

Task 1: Principles of Specific and Developmentally Appropriate Pedagogy

• Demonstrate knowledge of principles of specific pedagogy and developmentally appropriate pedagogy. Currently, there are five versions of Task 1: Multiple Subjects (MS), and Single Subject (SS) – English/Language Arts, SS-Mathematics, SS-Science, and SS-History/Social Science. Teaching Candidates complete the version that corresponds to the credential or which they are preparing. In the future, this task will be available in more content areas.
• Each version has our scenarios. They address developmentally appropriate pedagogy, assessment practices, adaptation of content or English learners, and adaptation of content or students with special needs. Written responses are necessary or each of the our scenarios.

Task 2: Connecting Instructional Planning to Student Characteristics or Academic Learning

• Demonstrate the ability to learn important details about a classroom of students, an English learner, and a student who presents a different instructional challenge. The teaching candidate will plan instruction that is shaped by those student characteristics.
• Demonstrate the ability to connect learning about students to instructional planning.
• Submit the completed response and any artifacts.

Task 3: Classroom Assessment of Academic Learning Goals

• Demonstrate the ability to select a unit of study and learning goal(s) and to plan standards-based, developmentally appropriate student assessment activities or a group of students. In addition, demonstrate the ability to assess student learning and diagnose student needs rom particular responses to the assessment activity.
• Demonstrate the ability to make assessment adaptations or two hocus students: an English learner and a student with identified special needs.
• Score, review, and analyze evidence of student learning and will reflect on assessment implications.
• Submit completed response, the assessment, selected student assessment responses, and, if appropriate, scoring scales, rubrics, or scoring guides as artifacts.

Task 4: Academic Lesson Design, Implementation, and Reflection at after Instruction

• Demonstrate the ability to design a lesson based on state-adopted academic content standards for students, implement that lesson making appropriate use of class time and instructional resources, meet the differing needs of individuals within the class, manage instruction and student interaction, assess student learning, and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson.
• Demonstrate the ability to make lesson adaptations or two hocus students.
• Demonstrate the ability to analyze evidence of student learning and reflect upon instruction.
• Submit completed response, a videotape of the lesson taught, instructional artifacts., and samples of student work.

This retooling of the credentialing process has had major implementation problems, the most obvious of which is that some students are involved in a ten-week quarter system. Atfer the ten weeks they must demonstrate mastery of TPA 1. The burden of this timeline rests in that the beginning credential student is taking a third of their credential units during this ten-week time frame. The students have scarcely had an initial overview of the essentials of teaching when they are forced into this high stakes assessment. Failure to achieve mastery on TPA 1 precludes the student from participating in any more credential courses.

   Although the TPEs and the TPAs have merit based on their connection to student learning objectives, to overlay this high-stakes teaching assessment on the teaching credential candidates who are in a 32 week (2 semester) or 33 week (3 quarter) credential program is burdensome. While the TPA system is only in the pilot phase, by 2006 it will be state mandated or all credential candidates and a major impediment to state licensure for some of these students. Teaching credential candidates will be responsible not only for all the elements of their teaching credential program, but also for mastery of the 13 TPEs as assessed formatively by the four TPAs. Additionally, as of July 1, 2004 all teaching credential candidates must have passed all sections of the California Subject Examinations or Teachers, CSET (www.ctc.ca.gov/proserv/examino/) before admission to any state college/university teaching credential program. This particular regulation was a response to NCLB. At a time when California and most parts of the U.S. are experiencing a severe teacher shortage, California has chosen to make entry into teacher credentialing programs and progress through these programs regulated by written assessment instruments. These two processes will not only limit the flow of teaching credential candidates but will differentially impact specific teacher credential populations. Immigrants and non-majority teaching credential candidates will be further delayed in their career objective attainment while the need or their specific skills is continually expanding. As the Tpas attempted to address the needs of English Learner students in the k-12 system, the state has made no adaptations or non-native Spanish speaking candidates. Although the tpas are not timed per se, their sequencing within the academic year has the same effect. If one has not successfully completed tpa 1 then no more credential classes can be taken. Essentially, the failure of any tpa halts all credential work. Thus the tpas serve as the new gates or hurdles to a teacher’s credentialing process.

   The Table below shows the progress of students of student in a California State University (representative of a typical our-year Institution that offers multiple and single subject MA teacher preparation programs that are evaluated under the new ETS criterion.

   Table 1 shows the progress through the new process as of the most recent year and academic quarter/term.

   There is an overall average drop-off of 38 percent, from the initial TPA1 quarter course-work and the following quarter. This drop-off is indicative of the gate-keeping function of the TPA process. There are also problems from the faculty point of view. The first quarter course (EELB 519) requires a 20:1 student/faculty ratio or grading purposes. This creates a sizable burden to find resources or extra faculty as follows:

   29 faculty given a 20:1 student/faculty ratio or EELB 519.

   36 faculty given a 10:1 student/faculty ratio or EELB 529.

   Where do the educational-training institutions come up with the funds or additional faculty required? There are no additional funds provided in the legislation to accommodate the extra faculty employment needed to implement the TPAs. Given these grading and workload issues, institutions have chosen to waive the TPA 2 requirement. Other institutions have chosen to delay the entire TPA implementation.

   The impact of the recent cuts in the budget, along with the overwhelming burden placed on faculty and staff at the implementation level has led us to the current evaluation of only Tasks 1, 3, and 4. Absent any increase in funding sources to adequately implement the TPA’s, and the resistance of faculty to volunteer many person-hours to the completion of the assessment in Task 2, it was simply omitted in this particular Assessment cycle.

   Caught between the legislative mandates and the lack of adequate funding, there is some doubt that the intent of the legislation will allow an assessment of teacher characteristics and teacher quality envisioned by the original legislation. One wonders whether the flawed execution will result in a waste of resources spent on the implementation of a program that will eventually be scrapped or a more realistic model that addresses the diverse needs of the California student population.

Reference List:

Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment web site: www.btsa.ca.gov/

California Commission on Teacher Credentialing web site: www.ctc.ca.gov/

California Department of Education web site:

www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/index.asp www.ctc.ca.gov/reports/cstpreport.pdf