Senate Bill S7445

                                BILL NUMBER:S7445

TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the education law, in relation to
teacher certification

PURPOSE:  Prevents any applicant for teacher certification to be
required to take an examination administered by Pearson Education,
Inc. and/or affiliates

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1 amends the education law by adding a new subdivision 7 to
section 3004 to prevent applicants for teacher certification to be
required to take examinations administered by Pearson Education Inc.

Section 2 sets an effective date of the first of September next
succeeding the date on which it shall have become law

JUSTIFICATION:  The edTPA is a standardized assessment of teaching
that is being required in many states for teacher certification. It
has been branded as a way to "professionalize" the field of education.
It will be administered during student teaching. It is a high stakes
assessment due to the reality that certification will depend on its
successful completion. It has been adopted by 34 states and the
District of Columbia. New York State was scheduled to fully adopt the
edTPA assessment in May of 2014. The edTPA assessment was created as
              

part of the federal Race to the Top education funding granted to New
York State.

Although Stanford University developed the initial version of edTPA,
it is being sold and administered by Pearson Education, Inc. The
anticipated cost for teaching candidates is $300. Furthermore, the
assessments will not be scored by teacher evaluators. Instead,
temporary workers will be paid approximately $75 per exam. These
Pearson scorers will not know the teacher candidates and they will
have no context for the communities in which student teaching is
happening. Most alarming is that the Pearson Education Inc. assessment
will require teacher candidates to submit videos of themselves
teaching K-12 classes. As a result, that will mean that Pearson
Education, Inc. will own videos of children who have student teachers
in their classrooms.

Last month, the Board of Regents unanimously voted to allow teaching
candidates who fail this new teacher performance assessment largely
based on Common Core standards to receive their initial five-year
certification, but only if they pass a separate written examination.
Delaying the edTPA isn't enough. The State has to end its relationship
with Pearson Education, Inc. with regards to teacher certification to
show all New Yorkers that it is putting its people above a corporate
attempt to make an undue profit from hard working taxpayers and our
future teachers.

We need to take the process of developing teacher certification tests,
education materials and curriculums corporations out of the hands of
corporations and put it back into the hands of educators. This bill
moves us toward that goal.


LEGISLATIVE HISTORY: This is a new bill.

EFFECTIVE DATE:  This act shall take effect immediately.