Texas edTPA Pilot
During the July 2019 State Board of Educator Certification (SBEC) meeting, the SBEC approved a 2-year edTPA pilot as an optional assessment in addition to the current Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities (PPR EC-12) exam for the demonstration of pedagogical knowledge and skills for the majority of initial educator certification categories. This allowed teacher candidates participating in the edTPA pilot to receive certification based on edTPA. During the October 2020 SBEC meeting, the SBEC approved an extension of the edTPA pilot for a third year, with a proposed pilot end date of September 1, 2022, rather than September 1, 2021.
*edTPA is an approved certification exam for standard certification.*
What is edTPA?
edTPA is a performance-based, subject-specific assessment and support system used to emphasize, measure, and support the skills and knowledge that all educators need to be effective. For edTPA, teacher candidates will prepare a portfolio of authentic evidence that reflects their Texas classroom and students during their clinical or internship experience.
Throughout the development of the portfolio, candidates have the opportunity to demonstrate their effectiveness to support students, engage students in ambitious learning, analyze students’ learning, and adjust their instruction to meet their students’ needs. To this end, candidates will provide evidence in response to the following questions for each of edTPA’s tasks:
- What do your students know, what can they do, and what are they learning to do?
- What do you want your students to learn? What are the core concepts, skills, and problem-solving strategies you want students to develop within the learning segment?
- How will you use your knowledge of your students’ assets to inform your plans?
- What instructional strategies, learning tasks, and assessments will you design to support student learning and language use?
- How will your learning segment support students to develop and use language that deepens content understanding?
- How is the teaching you propose supported by research and theory about how students learn?
- What kind of learning environment do you want to develop in order to establish respect and rapport, and to support students’ engagement in learning?
- What kinds of learning tasks actively engage students in the central focus of the learning segment?
- How will you elicit and build on student responses in ways that develop and deepen content understanding?
- In what ways will you connect new content to your students’ prior academic learning and personal, cultural, or community assets during your instruction?
- How will you use evidence from your instruction to examine and change your teaching practices to more effectively meet a variety of student learning needs?
- How will you gather evidence to identify patterns and analyze students’ learning?
- How will you provide meaningful feedback to your students?
- How will you use evidence of what students know and are able to do to plan next steps in instruction?
- How will you identify evidence of and explain students’ use of language that demonstrates the development of content understanding?
- How will you analyze whole class evidence to identify patterns of learning?
- How will you use student work to analyze mathematical errors, confusions, and partial understandings?
- How will you re-engage students in learning to address identified areas of challenge or need?
- How do you use evidence of student learning to reflect on the effectiveness of your re-engagement lesson?
- so the learning tasks, planned supports, instructional strategies, and assessments reflect students' prior learning and personal, cultural, and/or community assets. For more information, please go to edTPA.
edTPA in Texas
Forty of Texas’ educator preparation programs are participating in Year 3 of Texas’ edTPA pilot. Teacher candidates completing clinical teaching or internship in a Texas school district may be completing an edTPA portfolio as edTPA is an approved certification exam for standard certification. Aligned to candidates’ certification areas, candidates will select one of the subject-specific areas to complete their edTPA portfolio; and throughout the development of the portfolio, candidates will receive support from their educator preparation program. Further, all pilot edTPA portfolios are double-scored and candidates are encouraged to use the detailed outcome data to inform their continued professional growth.
For more information about Texas' edTPA pilot and potential statewide implementation, including important context and clarification regarding edTPA and Texas's current teacher shortage and student learning loss, and responses to common claims about edTPA in Texas, please review the following:
- Texas edTPA Implementation Informational Webinar
- Texas edTPA Implementation Information: Spring 2022 Overview Document
edTPA Pilot Reimbursements and Stipends
As part of the edTPA pilot support system, participating programs, candidates, and mentor/cooperating teachers are eligible to receive reimbursements and stipends for the cost of the assessment. See below.
Upon submission of an edTPA portfolio, all candidates will receive a $30 rebate from Pearson for a net fee of $281.
edTPA fee = PPR fee
Participating candidates not eligible for reimbursement by the district will receive a $165 reimbursement after submission of an edTPA portfolio.
No edTPA fee + 250 stipend
Participating candidates eligible for reimbursement by the district will receive a $531 reimbursement.
$250 Stipend
Mentor and cooperating teachers supporting candidates completing the edTPA are eligible to receive a $250 stipend.
Additional Resources
This page was last updated February 2022
For more information contact: DeMarco Pitre
Pearson edTPA support email: edTPAEPPSupport@pearson.com