A Local Evaluation of the Reliability, Validity, and Procedural Adequacy of the Teacher Performance Assessment Exam for Teaching Credential Candidates

In 1998, the California legislature passed Senate Bill SB 2042 which replaced the previous teacher certification legislation. The new law required that all elementary and secondary teacher certification programs in the State of California align their programs with new teaching standards. These standards included Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs), thirteen performance dimensions defined as relevant to competent teaching (Commission on Teaching Credentialing [CTC], 2008). Every program must also implement a performance assessment to evaluate each teacher candidates’ mastery of the TPEs (CTC, 2008). Each teacher certification candidate must pass their program’s assessment in order to receive their preliminary teaching credential. Therefore, it was required that all institutions of higher education in the State of California adopt or develop their own version of a performance assessment to be in compliance with the new state law (CTC, 2008). The purpose of this study was to evaluate a pilot administration of this process, providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of its potential. In order to comply with the legislation, the College of Education at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) chose to adopt the California Teacher Performance Assessment (CalTPA), an approved