tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post3391721731765737984..comments2024-03-29T04:34:05.185-04:00Comments on CURMUDGUCATION: edTPA Still BaloneyPeter Greenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511193640285760299noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-45197134802214685052016-05-20T15:23:38.951-04:002016-05-20T15:23:38.951-04:00"CALDER also considers the question of whethe..."CALDER also considers the question of whether edTPA can be used both to evaluate teacher practice and decide whether or not someone should get a teaching license (and if you find it weird that this conversation about making it harder to become a teacher is going on in the same world where we'll let you become a teacher with just five weeks of Teach for America training, join the club)."<br /><br />I think this is the answer: If you make the funnel of traditionally trained teachers more narrow at the entry point into the profession, while at the same time removing tenure and using VAMmy schemes to remove those already working in it at accelerated rates, you'll increase the ratio of TFA's and Relay "graduates".<br /><br />I liken it to the Chinese ploy of destroying the culture of Tibet by re-locating more and more ethnic Han within Tibet's borders. It takes a long time, but is quite effective in destroying and replacing the traditional culture.<br /><br />Barbara Madeloni, who has just been re-elected president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, slapped edTPA around back in 2012, and lost her job as a teacher educator at UMass Amherst for her troubles:<br /><br />https://academeblog.org/2012/09/14/the-hard-sell-and-the-educator/<br /><br />"The incursion of for profit companies into higher education occurs with willing collaborators. Whether misguided, fearful, subject to the lure of the advancement of their own careers, or standing to profit themselves we cannot know, but across the country faculty join administrators in advancing practices that open the door for the privatization of our work. The accountability regimes supported by accrediting agencies and professional organizations have become entryways for companies like Pearson, Inc. to not only sell their products, but to control our practices. In teacher education, the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) is being pushed as a national assessment for student teaching by faculty from Stanford and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE). With more than twenty states having signed on to field test it, and six states already mandating it as part of student teaching, the TPA is overtaking teacher education. Questions must be asked about what it means to standardize teacher education assessment, and how that standardization then reaches back into the content of our courses. But a more immediate concern is that this TPA is being delivered and scored by Pearson, Inc, which will hire contract scorers on a piece work basis to review videos of student teaching and written responses to canned questions. The work of developing student teachers, working closely with cooperating teachers, and assessing readiness to enter the classroom will come down to a number from a rubric scored by a piece work laborer who does not know the student teacher."<br /><br />Christine LanghofflaMissyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00516322307725011313noreply@blogger.com