Alabama officials consider suspending Praxis teacher test requirement

Math coach Gayle Holladay, wearing a pink sweater, stands over two teachers discussing math concepts in a teacher breakroom.

Opelika schools district math coach Gayle Holladay (standing, center) helps teachers at Northside Intermediate tackle new methods for teaching concepts of area and perimeter. Trisha Powell Crain/AL.com

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A group of Alabama educators and teacher preparation program officials Thursday recommended suspending the requirement for teachers to pass the Praxis content knowledge test in order to increase the available pool of K-12 teachers statewide.

“Praxis has been a big barrier,” Huntingdon College education dean Carolyn Corliss told state board of education members at their work session Thursday in Montgomery.

“I’ve talked to several deans [of education] across the state,” she said, “we know of two to three hundred students that could now be in the teacher pool if it had not been for Praxis holding them back,” she said.

The Praxis exam is a teacher certification test meant to screen out teachers who don’t have the knowledge for the job. Teachers would still need to pass other tests to be certified.

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Perry County Superintendent Marcia Smiley, a member of the committee, told board members the teacher shortage has hit her two K-12 schools hard.

Smiley said there are teachers in her district currently teaching under emergency certification that “are a few points shy” of passing the Praxis test.

“We know there are individuals who aren’t great test-takers and will never be great test-takers,” Smiley said, “but that doesn’t mean they can’t be, and aren’t, great teachers.”

Smiley said some teachers give up after taking the content knowledge test a couple of times and walk away from teaching altogether.

State Department Education Administrator Deanise Peacock said the suspension of the Praxis content knowledge test would be temporary.

“This would be something that we’re doing right now,” she said, “to make sure that we can fill these classrooms and take care of the needs that we’re hearing about.”

“We need to spend some time looking at data once changes are made to see what our next steps need to be.”

Alabama Board of Education member Stephanie Bell said she is concerned about maintaining the quality of teachers. “We don’t want just anyone in the classroom,” Bell said. “The quality, to me, is so crucial.”

The work group recommended continuing to require the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment or edTPA, a portfolio of work completed during the teacher’s internship that assesses the intern’s skills in planning lessons, teaching those lessons, differentiating instruction and using student assessments to plan next steps.

State board member Jackie Zeigler, whose district includes Mobile and parts of Baldwin County, said the edTPA is a better assessment of the skills that matter most to teaching.

“EdTPA gives evidence of best practices,” Alabama board of education member Jackie Zeigler said. “And is that not what we want?”

“The edTPA gives them that pedagogy,” Smiley said, “rather than that one sitting and letting that one sitting and that one test be the determination as to whether they are a teacher or not.”

The group recommended teachers pass the Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching test in the few areas where the edTPA is not available.

Teachers in the areas of early childhood education, elementary education and collaborative special education for kindergarten through sixth grade, will be required to take the Foundations of Reading assessment from Pearson, a requirement of the Literacy Act, beginning Sept. 1.

The work group, which includes representatives of higher education teacher preparation programs, K-12 schools, and the state department’s teacher certification area, has been meeting for several months to discuss ways to alleviate Alabama’s teacher shortage, Peacock said.

The group also recommended suspending the edTPA but keeping the Praxis content knowledge test for those pursuing certification through alternate pathways.

The state department of education has made multiple changes to teacher certification requirements in recent years to ease the pathway into teaching.

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Alabama State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the board should consider adopting the recommendations soon to allow teacher prep programs to adjust their programming where needed.

The board could adopt the changes as soon as next month or go through the regulatory process to adopt the changes in June.

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