Chapter 1: New Forms of Teacher Assessment

Beginning in the 1970s and continuing through the 1980s, teacher testing initiatives swept virtually all of the 50 states. The tests mandated by the different states for entry into teacher education programs, exit from such programs, initial teacher certification, regular or permanent certification, or occasionally even for continuation of tenured teachers generally com-prise little more than multiple-choice questions testing basic literacy and numeracy, professional knowledge, and, sometimes, subject matter knowledge. For teachers already in the classroom, low-inference obser-vation checklists are sometimes used as well. The 1990s may see fundamentally new forms of teacher tests, imple-mented for new purposes and reflecting new views of the teaching profes-sion and of teaching and learning processes. The prospects are exciting, the promises as yet unfulfilled. The new assessment methods described in this chapter are, for the most part, only now being developed. Little can be said, as yet, about their psychometric properties, let alone their even-