NCATE: Joint Venture with ETS Aligns Standards (Release)

Archived July, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—October 18, 1999
CONTACT: Jane Leibbrand (202) 466-7496

ETS Joint Venture with NCATE Aligns Standards and Assessments in Teacher Preparation Accreditation and Licensing

WASHINGTON, DC. — Educational Testing Service (ETS) has joined with several member professional associations of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) to make significant changes in the PRAXIS examinations for teacher licensing in order to ensure alignment between the examinations and the profession’s standards for teacher preparation.

The development of the next generation of the PRAXIS II content knowledge examinations for beginning teacher licensure is underway. These examinations will be based on standards developed by the teaching profession. NCATE member professional associations have developed standards for teacher preparation that require evidence of competent performance. Association representatives are now meeting with ETS to provide consultation in test development.

The revisions in the PRAXIS II test series will align PRAXIS with NCATE accreditation standards. NCATE and its affiliated professional associations are writing standards that describe what teacher candidates should know and be able to do so that students will learn. This approach to writing standards for individuals preparing to teach is an important shift away from standards that describe course content and curriculum.

Accredited schools of education are expected to design and deliver their curriculum using the standards of the professional associations. The alignment between the examinations and these new standards will lead schools of education to shape their curriculum to meet the profession’s standards. The revised examinations will be even better measures of teacher knowledge, because they will reflect a professional consensus on important subject content and teaching knowledge for teachers today.

The professional associations are providing a range of consulting services. The International Reading Association is providing input in the design of a new PRAXIS Reading series. Relevant content organizations reviewed the PRAXIS elementary education test specifications and tests, and provided the basis for a new elementary education PRAXIS series. The PRAXIS team drew heavily on the draft elementary education standards developed under NCATE’s aegis to ensure that the new test series would be compatible with the NCATE standards.

Following are NCATE member organizations that have been invited to name participants to help develop ETS test specifications and review new ETS tests: the Council for Exceptional Children, the International Reading Association, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Science Teachers Association, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The joint venture began when Arthur Wise, NCATE president, invited ETS’s Division of Teaching and Learning to a meeting on assessment of teacher candidate performance in Washington, DC Wise says that “out of that initial meeting grew a collaboration between ETS and the teaching profession that will reshape teacher preparation accreditation and licensing in the 21^st century. Those in the profession will be integrally involved in creating the licensing examinations, in critiquing them, and in validating them. This is a step forward for the teaching profession in the United States. It begins to put teaching on a par with the established professions, which for decades have set rigorous standards for entry examinations.” Wise continues, “The collaboration will help bring a new professionalism to teaching in the 21^st century. It will provide evidence that teaching is not a job in which anyone can ‘walk-in,’ and be competent, but is a profession with a base of knowledge that licensed teachers know and apply.”

Sharon Robinson, Chief Operating Officer of ETS, says “this collaboration will ensure that the profession’s standards are front and center when assessing teacher knowledge. Aligning standards and assessments for the field of teaching is a great beginning to the 21^st century.”

The United States Department of Education recognizes NCATE as the professional accrediting body for teacher preparation in the United States.

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