Relates to candidates for certificates in the classroom teaching service

1 Co-sponsor

• Tony Avella

Title of bill

An act to provide for the initial issuance of certificates in the classroom teaching service

Purpose or general idea of bill

This bill will make changes to the current timeline for new certification requirements for teachers.

Summary of specific provisions

Section 1 of the bill would provide that no teacher would be required to take the edTPA or achieve satisfactory levels of performance on the new edTPA portion of the New York State teacher certification examinations until April 30, 2017.

For candidates who have not yet received an initial certificate for teaching by April 30, 2016, these candidates would be required to instead achieve satisfactory performance levels on either the elementary or secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills-Written (ATS-W) test, in addition to the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), the Educating All Students (EAS) test, and the Content Specialty Test (CST), by April 30, 2017.

The bill would also provide that any candidate for a teaching certificate that has already achieved a satisfactory level of the new edTPA exam would be deemed to have met the requirements of the ATS-W test. The State Education Department would be authorized and required to take any necessary actions to establish new test dates for the ATS-W exams.

Section 2 of the bill would-provide that the act take effect immediately.

Justification

The edTPA is a complex performance assessment with multiple components, including requiring videotaping of student teaching in kindergarten-grade 12 classrooms. It has been argued that teaching programs have riot had enough time to make necessary changes to programs to effectively prepare future teachers for the new exam. It is important to ensure that our students pursuing a career in teaching are adequately prepared to take new certification exams. It is unfair to change certification requirements for teacher candidates who entered teaching programs under a different set of requirements and are now close to reaching certification. In addition, it could be argued that there is no research or evidence to support that the edTPA better identifies quality teachers any better than existing certification requirements already do.

Prior legislative history

2015: S.4037 - Referred to Higher Ed 2014: S.7532 Referred to Higher Ed / A.9207-B Referred to Education

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

This act shall take effect immediately and shall be deemed to have been in full force and effect on and after April 1, 2014.