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New York’s edTPA: The Perfect Solution to a Wrongly Identified Problem

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Teacher Performance Assessment and Accountability Reforms

Abstract

This chapter begins with a historical interpretation of federal education policy’s ideological developments around standards, accountability, and choice as the context in which New York established its edTPA policy. From there, the chapter analyzes the State’s first and second Race to the Top applications in order to explain how the edTPA requirement, though misguided and even harmful, appears completely rational given the national framing of education policy. Viewed in this light, New York State’s edTPA adoption offers an object lesson in how, if policymakers internalize the dominant narrative, they miss the opportunity to design policies that actually support the systemic improvements they claim to seek. The chapter concludes with an alternative policy option for using the potential strengths of the edTPA.

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DeMoss, K. (2017). New York’s edTPA: The Perfect Solution to a Wrongly Identified Problem. In: Carter, J., Lochte, H. (eds) Teacher Performance Assessment and Accountability Reforms. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56000-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56000-1_3

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