Pearson Fangs Are Now A Little Deeper

Bit of a wonkish post here, but someone's gotta do it. I see that Pearson has got its fangs even more deeply into Illinois now. Evidently ISBE adopted edTPA a couple of weeks ago as a certification requirement.

Last week, the Board met in Springfield and Chicago. They approved use of the edTPA, a performance  assessment developed by Stanford University, to assess a teacher candidate’s ability to plan, deliver and assess instruction. The edTPA will be required for licensure in Illinois beginning Sept. 1, 2015. 

Read about edTPA here, and here.  Between the recently leaked CPS professional development consultant video and the quiet adoption of the edTPA, I can't imagine why any young person would bother to go into teaching in Illinois. It's a shame-and-blame experience from day one and now there's another pound of flesh going to Pearson even before you start.

I don't know what the temps who will be grading these edTPA videos will be looking for, other than evidence of data worship and lack of dissent. I wonder if you have to do the call-and-response thing that CPS management thinks is important. Who knows anymore?

Watch for TFA to get some official exemption from this onerous requirement, if they haven't already. edTPA sounds like a huge, expensive pain to teacher licensure applicants; I'm just glad I got through my career before all of this craziness started.

By the way, ISBE should be an elected body, too.

UPDATE: The education students at UIC are already on the case.  Whenever I read anything sensible or brave or even just remotely interesting in higher ed policy, it's almost always something they're doing at UIC.