Senate Bill S7001

                                BILL NUMBER:S7001

TITLE OF BILL:  An act in relation to candidates for certificates in
the classroom teaching service

PURPOSE:

To make changes to the current timeline for new certification
requirements for teachers.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1. Provides that no teacher would be required to achieve
satisfactory levels of performance on the new edTPA portion of the New
York State teacher certification examinations until July 1, 2015.

For candidates who have not yet received an initial certificate for
teaching by April 30, 2014, these candidates would be required to
instead achieve satisfactory performance levels on either the
elementary or secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills-Written (ATS-W)
test, in addition to the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), the
Education All Students (EAS) test and the Content Specialty Test (CST)
by July 1, 2015.

The bill would also provide that any candidate for a teaching
certificate that has already achieved a satisfactory level of the new
              

edTPA exam would be deemed to have met the requirements of the ATS-W
test. The State Education Department would be authorized and required
to take any necessary actions to establish new test dates for the
ATS-W exams.

Section 2. Provides that the act take effect immediately and shall be
deemed to have been in full force and effect on and after April 1,
2014.

JUSTIFICATION:

The edTPA is a complex performance assessment with multiple
components, including requiring videotaping of student teaching in
kindergarten-grade 12 classrooms. It has been argued that teaching
programs have not had enough time to make necessary changes to
programs to effectively prepare future teachers for the new exam. It
is important to ensure that our students pursuing a career in teaching
are adequately prepared to take new certification exams. It is unfair
to change certification requirements for teacher candidates who
entered teaching programs under a different set of requirements and
are now close to reaching certification. In addition, it could be
argued that there is no research or evidence to support that the edTPA
better identified quality teachers any better than existing
certification requirements already do.

One component of the edTPA requires videotaping portions of classroom
activity and there is a requirement for student teachers to acquire
permission from parents to include interaction with students as part
of the student teacher's submission. In view of the current concerns
raised by many parents around the privacy of their children, it is
believed that this aspect of the assessment will be extremely hard for


student teachers to complete. Additional time to alert parents to this
element is required and student teachers should not be delayed in
their certification due to this obstacle.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

New bill.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None.

EFFECTIVE DATE:

This act shall take effect immediately and shall be deemed to have
been in full force and effect on and after April 1, 2014.