The work of several key stakeholders, particularly
the State Board of Education, has created
growing momentum toward improving educator
preparation in Tennessee. The SBE revision of
the comprehensive Educator Preparation Policy
in 2014 laid the groundwork for many important
policy changes to licensure, program approval,
and program review. Several educator
preparation programs also have implemented
innovative practices, particularly to recruit a
more diverse pool of candidates. However,
several opportunities remain for Tennessee to
show leadership in better preparing early-career
teachers for the classroom.
Our analysis of the current state of teacher
preparation, interviews with EPPs, and focus
groups with educators and school district
leaders, have identified eight key areas that
must be high priorities for policymakers, EPPs,
school districts, advocacy organizations, and
other stakeholders:
• Improve the licensure assessment system
in the state
• Increase staff capacity within the
Tennessee Department of Education
• Enhance the racial and ethnic diversity of
the teaching population
• Strengthen classroom-based experiences
for teacher candidates
• Increase collaboration between EPPs and
school districts
• Develop a clear process for reviewing
and approving EPPs
• Increase access to and transparency of
data on EPPs
• Improve the quality of the student admissions process for EPPs
We offer the following sets of recommendations
to advance each of these areas.
Improve the licensure assessment
system in the state
The state should require all teacher candidates
in Tennessee to take and pass the edTPA
assessment. For certain subject areas, state
policymakers should also adopt licensure
assessments that are more aligned to
Tennessee State Standards.
There are preliminary, but promising findings
that passing scores on edTPA are associated
with teaching effectiveness. A TDOE analysis,
for example, has established a relationship
between edTPA scores and how teachers later
perform in the classroom. However, there are
some challenges associated with expanding
implementation of edTPA, which costs $300,
compared to $146 for the Praxis Principles of
Learning and Teaching assessment. EPPs will
also need support regarding changes to the
curriculum and understanding edTPA grading
rubric constructs and progressions.
Praxis subject assessments are another important
type of licensure assessment administered in
Tennessee, but the SBE and the TDOE are
currently evaluating developing assessments
that align to Tennessee Academic Standards.
We applaud the state exploring the use of these
customized assessments. However, one important
consideration of moving away from the nationally
recognized Praxis relates to how to treat out-ofstate candidates, especially for districts that
hire teachers from bordering states. Another
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