The Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) is the state regulatory board which decides all the state rules around teacher quality and certification. In 2007, the legislature directed the board to "set performance standards and develop, pilot, and implement a uniform and externally administered professional-level certification assessment based on demonstrated teaching skill." RCW 28A.410.220(13)
Note that the Legislature explicitly provided for an assessment and that it is to be based on "demonstrated teaching skill."
The PESB has deviated from this legislative directive. The PESB has decided to allow teachers to submit a portfolio of their work, which is a report. This is not the same as an assessment of a teacher's ability in the classroom. This report is called a ProTeach Portfolio, and it will be judged on how well it meets the twelve criteria and three standards set out by the PESB. To read these twelve criteria and three standards, click here.
Even so, a ProTeach Portfolio report could require that a teacher show the ability to raise student achievement, as measured by the WASL replacement, the Measures of Student Progress. Unfortunately, the criteria established for evaluating portfolios do not probe this element of teaching at all, and instead require teachers to show use of instructional methodologies. The closest that any of the criteria come to measuring "demonstrated teaching skill" is this one, which states: "using instructional strategies that make learning meaningful and show positive impact on student learning."
This criterion completely lacks rigor. It fails to define student learning, or how much student learning teachers must be able to impart, leaving this key element wide open to interpretation. And, as it is only one of twelve criteria, a completely ineffective teacher can make up this deficit by earning a high score on another criterion, such as "informing families about each student's educational progress."
But the problem goes even deeper. The PESB hired an independent consultant to establish a passing score, or cut score, for the ProTeach Portfolio. Research and test development staff from Educational Testing Service (ETS) designed and conducted a standard setting study. The study involved an expert panel of 16 Washington educators recruited by the PESB and was conducted on August 24-25, 2010 in Olympia. The panel concluded that teachers ought to earn a cut score of 33.5 out of a total of 48 points, which is the equivalent of 70%, or a C.
When the PESB met last month, on September 22 and 23rd, they decided to reject the recommendation of their expert panel. Instead, they set the cut score at 31, one full standard error of measurement below the standard recommended by the expert panel. This is the equivalent of setting a passing score at 65%, which is normally considered below passing, a D, in most teachers' grade books.
The PESB has done this before. When they set the passing score for the WEST-B, the test prospective students of education take to demonstrate basic skills in reading and math, it chose a lower score than the professional panel recommended. See page 2 of Esther Baker's memo at Tab 3 on this page.
When legislatures and regulatory boards try to raise teacher quality by imposing more rules and requirements on the process of becoming a teacher, this is what happens. The group being regulated focuses its energies on making sure that the rules are not rigorous. The end result is that standards get lowered, not raised.
The solution to this is to create a new pathway to teaching which is genuinely free from these time-consuming procedural barriers to becoming a teacher. Allow principals to hire and train highly-qualified college graduates for the classroom. This is the way to excellence--not by imposing faux assessments like the ProTeach Portfolio. The ProTeach Portfolio is just the sort of requirement that encourages our best teaching candidates to think about law or medical school instead, or consider moving to a state with fewer meaningless obstacles to becoming a teacher.