Company Tests Teacher Assessment Software

Responding to the need for a more meaningful assessment that can accurately measure a new teacher’s knowledge and instructional capabilities within the classroom, Educational Testing Service, in collaboration with educators and state education officials across the country, is developing the Praxis Performance Assessment for Teachers (PPAT). Field testing began earlier this month.

The PPAT will be a performance-based assessment that reflects the knowledge, skills and abilities that classroom practitioners deem essential for effective teaching. The assessment will align with the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium Model Core Teaching Standards and is being developed in collaboration with teacher education faculty, cooperating teachers and department of education officials from 17 U.S. states and territories.

“The cutting-edge PPAT is being designed specifically to help educator preparation programs ensure that their candidates are ready to teach when they are hired and placed in the classroom,” said George Powell, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of ETS’s Teacher Licensure & Certification Programs. “The PPAT will accomplish this goal through its unique assessment tasks that allow candidates to demonstrate real-world teaching skills.”

Powell also noted that the first task, which is formative and locally scored, provides a good foundation for the next three tasks, which are summative and centrally and objectively scored. These tasks are submitted and scored sequentially to afford a continuum of feedback that measures and fosters a candidate’s growth throughout the student-teaching experience.

The PPAT will also enable teacher candidates to develop a professional growth plan that will guide them through the reflective practice of self-evaluation and inform their ongoing professional development once in service. 

In order to ensure that the scoring process is fair, efficient and reliable, the PPAT will use multiple raters for each candidate. The raters will include local education faculty evaluators for the first task, along with a different qualified external reviewer whom ETS will recruit and train for each of the three subsequent tasks. ETS will also carefully monitor the results to ensure that raters apply the rubrics accurately and consistently throughout the rating process.

The PPAT is scheduled for its national debut during fall 2014.

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