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 comprise little more than multiple-choice questions testing basic literacy and numeracy, knowledge, and, sometimes, subject matter knowledge. For teachers already in the classroom, low-inference observation checklists are sometimes used as well. The 1990s may see fundamentally new forms of teacher tests, implemented for new purposes and reflecting new views of the teaching profession 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 eventual impacts on the educational system, teachers and teaching, or schooling outcomes. Nonetheless, given the rapid emergence of new methods and applications for teacher testing, it is a propitious time for this review. The teacher tests now in common use have been strenuously and justifiably criticized for their content, their format, and their impacts, as well as the virtual absence of criterion-related validity evidence supporting their use. More fundamentally, the justification for these tests is bound up with a model of the educational system and the work of teaching. Movements toward teacher professionalization and school restructuring are creating both the possibility and the demand for new forms of teacher assessments. After summarizing criticisms of the objective teacher tests now in wide use, this chapter contrasts the bureaucratic and professional models of teaching and describes how professional examinations might differ from the teacher tests in use today. It then takes up the question of the knowledge base of teaching: What are these new forms of teacher assessment 3