General Overview of edTPA - Essay Sample

The edTPA website offers a comprehensive guideline on how to fulfill a teaching assessment and become fully certified. Three primary tasks are required by the edTPA. They include creating teaching plans, offering lessons to learners and assessing the learners performance. In order to fulfill my requirement, edTPA requires that I develop a portfolio that portrays the materials I will use in teaching students. Also, as per the edTPA guidelines, I will portray my preparedness to teach by employing the lesson plans offered to me to give support to the learners educational needs and strengths. Additionally, I will employ the prepared lesson plans to improve the learners instructions in order for them to become more effective. Also, edTPA will require me as an aspiring teacher to use the designed lesson plans to analyze whether the learners are learning, and also to indulge the learners in ambitious learning.

As a teacher candidate, I will review the scoring rubric for the edTPA assessment. This will help me to understand how I will be assessed. Additionally, I will obtain the assessment handbook from the educator preparation program I will be attending. Moreover, I will perform a thorough review of the video-recording agreements as outlined in the edTPA candidates policies section. This will be followed by the checking of the submission and reporting deadlines offered by the edTPA and then make a registration at the edTPA website. Also, I will be required to pay an assessment fee of $300 to the edTPA, and I must submit the payment during edTPA registration.

I attended an educator preparation program and was offered a teaching candidate performance edTPA voucher. When applying for the edTPA assessment in World Language/Spanish in New Jersey, I will use the voucher to cover the full portion of the edTPA assessment fee or part of the fee. Additionally, after making the edTPA registration as a teaching candidate, I will be offered an 18-months edTPA subscription period. During this period, I will have a chance to request a change in my preferred form of edTPA assessment or also withdraw my edTPA application for a partial refund.

At this point, I will start developing my portfolio using the Pearson e-portfolio system or the Integrated Platform Provider System by edTPA. After a successful registration, the edTPA will require me to provide unedited video recordings of myself as I teach in a classroom. This is because edTPA considers the submission of such video recordings to be part of the teaching candidates portfolio, which must be scored by impeccably trained teaching educators. These requirements by edTPA are based on decades of performance evaluation development on teaching candidates. This is on teaching practices and skills that are effective in improving the level of students learning.

After submitting my portfolio, I will wait for the release of the edTPA scores as per the dates indicated by the edTPA. The scores will be sent to me and to the teaching preparation program that I indicated to be my score recipient at the time of registration. Also, a copy of the score will be sent to the New Jersey Department of Education, which is the agency responsible for issuing the educator licensures to teaching candidates. In New Jersey, the edTPA assessment constitutes of 15 rubrics. Each of rubrics is scored using a five-points scale. The maximum score possible that a candidate can attain in 75 points. In light to this, I will be required to attain a score of 42 points to pass the edTPA certification.

The 42-point score is considered to be the New Jersey Professional Performance Standard (PPS), that all educators from K-12 must have. Nevertheless, since I will be taken World Language/Spanish, a credential area with less than 15 rubrics, an adjusted PPS will be used to rate the scores. In this case, a proportional adjustment will be made in such a way that the average score contribution of each rubric to the overall score is similar across all fields. This multi-step standards scoring system for credential areas that have less or more than 15 rubrics was developed in 2013. Also, if I fail to attain the 42 points PPS, I will have to wait for the reporting dates of the edTPA single task retakes. This will inform me about the scheduled time for retaking the failed tasks in the edTPA assessment test. Also, I will be required to pay for reapplying for the edTPA retakes during the new edTPA registration.