Aligning Teacher Preparation, Professional Development, and Evaluation: The Orthodoxy of Accountability in the United States

• In Event: 75.011 - The Intended and Side Effects of Accountability Reforms in Education: International Perspectives

Abstract

Purpose
This paper explores how the rationalities associated with test-based accountability (TBA) and standardization are limiting the possibilities for multiple conceptualizations of teaching and teachers to exist. Using pluralism (Connolly, 2005; 2017), or the view that diversity of thought and action is a necessary feature of critically-responsive institutions, it uses policy documents and evaluation instruments to illustrate how a convergence around a narrowed conception of teaching and teachers drastically reduces teachers’ exposure to various teaching practices and philosophies.

Literature
Globally, high-stakes teacher accountability systems have become rooted in testing, evaluation and dis/incentivization as a means for shaping teacher practice and defining teacher ‘quality’ (Berliner 2018; Lingard, 2010). Teachers face mounting pressures to rely on test data and evaluative tools (e.g., rubrics) to guide their classroom practices (Hardy, 2018), which is reinforced in three interrelated spheres: teacher preparation, professional development (PD), and evaluation. Alignment between these domains has become a key objective of large federal grants in the US (e.g., Teacher Incentive Fund [TIF] grant), which have incentivized external actors to develop comprehensive packages that accommodate the grant requirements. TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (hereon TAP) is one such package.

Methods
Using policy documents and accountability instruments and artefacts (e.g., grant applications, professional development handbooks, observation rubrics), this study looks at TAP’s involvement in Texas and Arizona’s teacher preparation, PD, and evaluation programs. Using content and discourse analyses (Bacchi, 2000; Foucault, 2002), it (1) maps TAP’s presence in these domains, (2) identifies key features of and relationships between the domains (and TAP), and (3) uses tenets of pluralism (Connolly, 2017) to problematize goals that prioritize strict alignment.


Results
Results indicate that a great number of Arizona and Texas teachers are engrossed within a TAP circuit that shapes multiple domains of their professional identity and growth. Multi-million dollar TIF grants in each state secured TAP as the comprehensive teacher evaluation and PD system in 58 Arizona and 27 Texas schools. TAP was also introduced into two large universities’ teacher preparation programs. As such, many teachers transition directly from TAP preparation to TAP evaluation and PD. While TAP began in only 27 schools in Texas, it has since become the foundational philosophy and infrastructure for the entire state’s all-encompassing teacher evaluation and PD program (now called T-TESS).
TAP’s ubiquitous presence in these interrelated domains helps build system alignment, but it also means that teachers are increasingly limited in their exposure to alternative philosophies, practices, or measurements of teaching. Each stage of their professional identity is calibrated to TAP, which is characterized by high-stakes TBA (e.g., value-added, merit pay) and standardization (e.g., rubric-based observation and PD).


Significance
Strict alignment between teacher preparation, evaluation, and PD creates an orthodoxy that makes adaptability and professional discretion difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to practice. As TAP presides as a multi-domain system, the boundaries between standard and alternative practice grows increasingly rigid, while teachers’ capacities to be critically-responsive to the changing needs of their students is compromised.

Author

• Jessica Holloway, Deakin University