A primary focus of recent educational policymaking has been on improving measures of teaching effectiveness, attributable in part to recent federal policies such as the Race to the Top initiative and Investing in Innovation. To date, neither researchers nor practitioners have arrived at a consensus on the best methods for evaluating special…

In the Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers program, trained assessors observe teacher candidates in their assigned teaching environments and determine their instructional effectiveness. The article highlights the program's improvements over its predecessor, noting the need to explore teaching performance as a new…

Student learning must be touchstone by which teachers and teacher educators are gauged. Unfortunately articles in November 1996 "Kappan" on "Quality Teaching for the 21st Century" don't support this statement. In contrast to three national certification initiatives, Oregon's teacher licensure system (Oregon Work Sampling…

One of the three components of The Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers (trademark) is a classroom performance assessment concerning the new teacher's ability to apply basic elements of good teaching in a classroom setting. At the core of this classroom assessment are 19 criteria for which assessors are to identify…

Several federal legislative proposals have called for specified minimum pass rates on state teacher licensing examinations to establish institutional eligibility for certain federal funding. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia will use The Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers developed by the Educational…

The Educational Testing Service is engaged in developing tests for teacher licensure, The Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers (TM). A central component of Praxis III: Classroom Performance Assessments is a set of proposed criteria that have been developed to assess the classroom performance of beginning teachers. The…

The framework for teaching described in this book is based on PRAXIS III: Classroom Performance Assessments criteria developed by the Educational Testing Service. This framework identifies those aspects of a teacher's responsibilities that have been documented through empirical studies and theoretical research as promoting improved student…

The College of Education and Human Services at Wright State University (Ohio) has been working since 1987 to develop and refine a portfolio assessment approach for use with candidates preparing for teaching as a profession. This paper documented efforts in authentic assessment as they related to PRAXIS III/Pathwise Assessment, which has been…