The edTPA is a pre-service performance assessment designed to determine a teacher candidate’s readiness to teach. It is the first nationally available, educator designed performance assessment for candidates entering the teaching profession. The edTPA requires the teacher candidate to plan, instruct and assess a 3 to 5 hour learning segment while developing an electronic portfolio of evidence of teaching competency. The assessment is completed during the second semester of the teaching internship. The 27 subject-specific versions of the assessment share a common architecture and common language.
UNC is an edTPA leader in North Carolina, first implementing edTPA in AY 2010-11. The following year, all UNC teacher candidates completed edTPA portfolios which were then scored by trained local evaluators. Between 2010 and 2016, UNC faculty, supervisors and partner clinical educators evaluated edTPA portfolios using the Local Evaluation protocol.
In Fall 2016, UNC shifted from local evaluation to official scoring of edTPA portfolios be Pearson, the edTPA’s operational provider. This shift helped to ease the training and scoring load of UNC faculty, supervisors, and clinical partners and helped to ensure more reliable scoring for candidates and the program overall. These data supported the developing of a more valid and reliable Quality Assurance System for UNC’s educator preparation programs.