Rethinking Schools: TPA, Conformity, and Corporations - or the Why and How of the Sucking Out of Creativity and Craft From Education

As I was perusing the various issues of Rethinking Schools to find a piece that resonated with me and my classes, I was faced with a problem. I realized that while the articles offered compelling ideas for lessons with powerful social-justice and environmental themes, I could not use these ideas in my day-to-day job as a teacher in Providence. While other teachers throughout the country are offering up wonderful lessons such as "Paradise Lost: Introducing students to climate change through story", "The Danger of a Single Story: Writing essays about our lives", or "Writing for Justice: Persuasion from the Inside Out", I am required to follow a "Viable and Guaranteed Curriculum" that has been scripted by others and which must be followed with fidelity. Indeed, most of what I saw in the issues seemed foreign to the reality that is education in Providence today. The exception is in the current edition which focuses on the pros and cons of "edTPA (Teacher Performance Assessment), the test for credential candidates now being piloted in teacher education programs around the country." Although pre-teaching certification isn't something I, a veteran teacher, needs to worry about, it is directly correlated with the state of public education in Providence, and concerns how the standardization and corporatization of teacher education should be a worry for all practicing teachers who someday will be vacating their seats at the education table.

The three featured articles offer differing opinions on TPA. Linda Darling-Hammond and Maria E. Hyler argue the merits of the controversial measure in "The Role of Performance Assessment in Developing Teaching as a Profession". Stating that TPA follows the model of The National Board, the authors note that TPA is a positive step in formulating professional standards which, in part, "asks candidates to plan a unit of instruction, adapt the plans for English learners and students with disabilities, and track three to five days of instruction. Candidates discuss how and why the plans are revised as teaching unfolds, submit a continuous video clip of a teaching segment, and collect and analyze evidence of student learning. Candidates also describe and show how they develop students' language proficiency and academic language in the discipline." All this sounds positive, but others disagree.

Barbara Madeloni and Julie Gorlewski argue that "Teacher education (like K–12) is under attack by those seeking to exploit the public good and privatize education" in their article "Wrong Answer to the Wrong Question: Why we need critical teacher education, not standardization." They see TPA as an affront to our profession and that first and foremost "we need our schools of education to ask pre-service teachers to wrestle with identity and race, to explore the historical/cultural contexts of school, and to frame teaching as the political work that it is." They claim that the TPA package, as now owned and marketed by Pearson Education Inc. with its' calibrated score for a teaching candidate's portfolio, doesn't take into account the nuances of the teaching craft, nor does it "address the most pressing concerns of critical multicultural educators: making schools sites for social justice and advocating for education as liberation."

The final article, "What's a Nice Test Like You Doing in a Place Like This? The edTPA and corporate education 'reform' ", by Wayne Au, highlights problems with TPA which mirrors the current state of affairs in Providence. Au states he and his colleagues at The University of Washington struggle with the same things public education teachers struggle with today: teaching to the 'test', and that "instead of focusing on good teaching, our conversations are quickly turning to how to prepare our students for the edTPA." He points out the obvious issues of corporate intervention in public education since Pearson Education administers TPA, but really hammers his argument home with this observation: "Perhaps the edTPA does become the new national bar exam for teachers. Between Pearson's involvement and the evidence of my own teacher education program, as well as other programs around the country, I'm fearful that the high-stakes, standardized nature of the edTPA is already ruining teacher education, perhaps killing the patient while trying to save it."

If TPA, as administered by Pearson, becomes the certification route for new teachers, who will want to become a teacher? New teachers will soon realize the standardization process of a teaching cert is just the first step in learning what education is today: the new money-making darling for corporations where education is all about numbers, data, and standardization, and that a teacher's career is at the mercy of how their students score on corporate-packaged tests. Within the course of my career in Providence, I have seen all control taken from me so that my role is little more than a deliverer of the set curriculum others have deemed necessary for my students. My first years of teaching were hard, but they were creative and fulfilling. Amongst others, I created a unit on "Hearing My Voice" based on Spike Lee films for one ELA class and one on the immigrant experience with ELLS called "From ....to Rhode Island: Memories of Me and My Land Merging With New Rhode Island Roots". I worked with actors from Trinity and professors at Brown to create "From the Page to the Stage" lessons in reading, performing, and interpreting Shakespearean plays. In essence, I wrote and delivered many units integrating reading, research, writing, viewing, and performance. Students wrote what was meaningful to them as a conduit for navigating English as a second language and read stories that were relevant to their lives. I was able to teach the writings of Malcolm X and Isabelle Allende amongst others. And the students seemed to enjoy their learning. Today, I enter each school year knowing I will once again be required to teach the same novels, the same writing assignments and the same scripts the district requires and always with the end in mind: the "test" - NECAP, end of curriculum unit tests, ACCESS (for language learners) and soon - the PARC, which, in turn, shows the Rhode Island Department of Education that I am an "effective" teacher. To that end staff meetings are organized around data chats, not student engagement or creative curriculum ideas.

Teaching today, at least in Providence, is a dry, stressful career. And as a member of a school labeled "intervention" - due to the fact our English language learners and exited English language learners, the majority of our students, have not been able to score well on NECAP, a test that all students who have been in the country for more than one year must take - it is a career that is now overseen by a corporate partner: Floridian-based Cambium. Our professional development has been devised by Cambium and it is driven by conformity. For instance, there are 10 "non-negotiables" we must follow with each month focused on one of the non-negotiables. Even classroom board configurations must all look alike. So, what does my creative, fulfilling career entail today? If it's the third week of a quarter, I must have finished three clusters of a unit from "Edge", the book of choice for all secondary language learners in Providence, before jumping into an assessment-based written assignment chosen by a Providence Central Administration team - of a novel - chosen by a Providence Central Administration team.

Education today is turning into a scripted game. And, while we all want our students to have the tools to become successful college candidates, it seems as though we have forgotten that students' needs do not come in a uniformed package. They are people, not cogs. So, unfortunately, the victors are not the students. They are the corporations who have something to gain from our students and tax payers: money and lots of it. So, future educators take note: TPA is just the first step of being molded into what others have deemed is necessary for students. Your voice, your creativity, your ideas about what and how to teach what you know your students need, are not truly valued. In fact, your place at the table has already been sold and it seems this time around Pearson had the winning bid.