Assessing Professional Knowledge : Ohio

Analysis of Ohio's policies

Ohio requires all new teachers to pass a popular pedagogy assessment from the Praxis II series.

Ohio is also accelerating its participation in the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) consortium by including all of their institutions of higher learning in the pilot program next year, with the expectation that they it will allow or require the use of TPA in licensure as early as 2012. It appears that this will replace the requirement for new teachers to pass the Praxis III performance assessment in the first two years of teaching.

Recommendations for Ohio

Verify that commercially available tests of pedagogy actually align with state standards.
Ohio 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 Ohio is commended for once again 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. Both Ohio and Arkansas have reported pass rates on the Praxis III performance-based assessment 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

Ohio recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.