Assessing Professional Knowledge : Idaho

Analysis of Idaho's policies

Idaho only requires all new elementary teachers and those with foreign language endorsements to pass a popular pedagogy test from the Praxis series in order to attain licensure.

Idaho is also part of the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) Consortium and began a pilot program in Spring 2011. 

Citation

www.ets.org/praxis http://aacte.org/index.php?/Programs/

Recommendations for Idaho

Require that all new teachers pass a pedagogy test.
Idaho should verify that all new teachers meet professional standards through a test of professional knowledge for secondary teachers as well as elementary teachers.

Verify that commercially available tests of pedagogy actually align with state standards.
Idaho should ensure that its selected test of professional knowledge measures the knowledge and skills the state expects new teachers to have.

Ensure that performance assessments provide a meaningful measure of new teachers' knowledge and skills.
While Idaho is commended for considering the use of a performance-based assessment, the state should proceed with caution until additional data are available on the Teacher Performance Assessment. Additional research is needed to determine how the TPA compares to other teacher tests as well as whether the test's scores are predictive of student achievement. The track record on similar assessments is mixed at best. The two states that currently require the Praxis III performance-based assessment report pass rates of about 99 percent. Given that it takes significant resources to administer a performance-based assessment, a test that nearly every teacher passes is of questionable value.

State response to our analysis

Idaho recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.