edTPA Consultants Supporting Implementation Nationwide

(May 7, 2015, Washington, D.C.) – The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is proud to partner with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) to officially launch the edTPA National Academy—an invited cadre of consultants who are trained to provide professional development and support edTPA implementation efforts in teacher preparation programs across the nation. Most importantly, consultants have deep expertise in both disciplinary knowledge and pedagogy. By offering consistent quality support and knowledge building, the National Academy will sustain the growing community participating in edTPA, currently numbering 615 institutions in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

The edTPA National Academy connects teacher preparation programs with free and fee-for-service consultants who provide face-to-face or webinar-based professional development. More than 50 edTPA National Academy consultants have been prepared and endorsed by SCALE. These individuals are educators, administrators and PK-12 teacher leaders experienced with edTPA, having served as coordinators, benchmarkers, scorer trainers and local and national leaders.

“We identify consultants through a refereed and selective process,” said Raymond L. Pecheone, executive director of SCALE. “Criteria include involvement in state or local implementation, edTPA leadership within a program, experience developing and delivering edTPA-related professional development, disciplinary expertise and training and previous work in national scoring and training.”

Already, National Academy consultants have led workshops and other events in six states since the program was introduced in January, supporting edTPA implementation and promoting the educative value of an assessment built by the profession for the profession. This effort is now supported by a newly developed National Academy Consultant Database, searchable by areas of expertise and geographical location, that connects programs with consultants.

Common workshop topics include the following:

• General introduction to edTPA
• “Deep-dive” handbook and rubric walk-throughs
• Preparation for local evaluation
• Curriculum mapping
• Academic language
• PK-12 support
• Candidate support

AACTE and SCALE collect feedback from each workshop to inform continual improvement of the National Academy, which is intended to be an adaptive and responsive resource addressing programs’ evolving needs.

“This team of scholars and edTPA experts not only supports implementation efforts around a specific assessment,” said Sharon P. Robinson, president and CEO of AACTE, “but it also accelerates meaningful improvement in educator preparation by promoting accountability and assessment linked to PK-12 student outcomes.”

For more information about edTPA, visit http://edtpa.aacte.org.

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AACTE: The Leading Voice on Educator Preparation
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is a national alliance of educator preparation programs dedicated to high-quality, evidence-based preparation that assures educators are ready to teach all learners on Day 1. Its over 800 member institutions represent public and private colleges and universities in every state, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. AACTE leads the field in advocacy and capacity building by promoting innovation and effective practices as critical to reforming educator preparation. For more information, visit www.aacte.org.

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE)
The Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) is a research and development center based at Stanford University in California. SCALE provides technical consulting and support to schools, districts and states that have committed to adopting performance-based assessment as part of a multiple-measures system to evaluate student learning and measure school and teacher effectiveness. SCALE works with education agencies and practitioners to develop customized assessment materials, establish and oversee scoring procedures, provide professional development to support teachers and schools engaged in the work, and conduct research to support the validity and reliability of the assessment system. At the core of our work is the belief that a performance assessment system should be educative for students, teachers and schools.