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A couple months ago, I wrote about a new assessment designed to address one of the ever-present challenges in teacher preparation: How do you ensure that those entering the classroom can teach effectively starting their first day as the teacher of record?

Now called the edTPA (formerly the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA)), the assessment was developed by Stanford University in collaboration with teachers and teacher educators (higher education involvement was coordinated by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education) to set a new standard for determining teacher readiness. It requires teacher candidates demonstrate the skills necessary to meet the daily challenges of classroom teaching, including but not limited to:

• Planning around student learning standards
• Designing instruction for students based on their specific needs
• Teaching a series of lessons and adapting them to respond to student learning
• Evaluating student learning
• Analyzing teaching through reflecting on how to improve student outcomes

At the time I wrote of it, the assessment was being field tested. That field test is wrapping up, and 7,000 teacher candidates from more than 160 institutions of higher learning in 22 states have electronically submitted portfolios in 13 content areas. And earlier this week, it was announced that edTPA will be available nationally beginning this fall.

edTPA is intended to be used by states, institutions of higher education, and alternative certifications programs as one of multiple measures for teacher licensure and to support the accreditation of teacher preparation programs. Designed to complement existing entry-level assessments that focus on basic skills or subject-matter knowledge, edTPA examines candidate lesson plans, videotapes of instruction, student work, reflective commentary and more.

Some might wonder why this is news. It seems like all we talk about at the national level is assessment and evaluation, be it of students or teachers. But what is unique about this assessment is that it was legitimately driven by the field. It has not received money or endorsement from the federal government (and some would argue that the government is trying to lower the bar to entry for the teaching profession). And while the government is promoting the use of standardized test scores of graduates’ students to evaluate schools of education (as well as practicing educators and K-12 schools), despite researchers’ (and educators’) concerns over the validity of that methodology, with edTPA, the teacher educator community is proposing a viable and valid alternative.

In addition, this assessment will enable us to aside the often-political argument over what pathways to teaching are the best and focus instead on whether candidates, regardless of their preparation program, are able to meet a common standard of practice. And it will also provide very useful feedback to those preparation programs that can be used to drive improvement. edTPA has been extremely well-received by the field, proving that those in the education community are hungry for performance data that they can believe in.

As Stanford’s Linda Darling-Hammond writes:

This may be the first time that the teacher education community has come together to hold itself accountable for the quality of teachers who are being prepared and to develop tools its members believe are truly valid measures of teaching knowledge and skill. Unlike other professionals, teachers have historically had little control over the tests by which they are evaluated. This rigorous, authentic measure represents a healthy and responsible professionalization of teacher preparation. …

In the context of the current debates about teacher education quality, it has been inspiring to see educators step up and accept the challenge to create something better, rather than merely complaining about narrow measures that do not reflect our highest aspirations. The best hope for significantly improving education at all levels of the system is for educators to take charge of accountability and make it useful for learning and improvement.

So edTPA is a big deal. Hopefully policymakers will look at both the final outcome and the process by which it was developed and recognize what great things can happen when educators lead the education reform charge. And perhaps as a result, they will be willing to listen to what educators have to say on other issues as well.