Teacher blame and corporate gain: EdTPA and the takeover of teacher education

Abstract

The chapter provides a critical socio-historical analysis of the introduction of edTPA. The authors set the current focus on nationalized teacher assessment against a growing syndicate of controlling interests in public education, as well as a concomitant and deliberate discourse of teacher demonization. As such, edTPA represents the final frontier of teacher performance assessment. The authors argue that current scrutiny and management of teacher education is the final stage of a decades-long process to wrest control of what happens in classrooms away from teachers and administrators and into the hands of private, corporate, and neo-liberal stakeholders. This shift has taken place with little interest in the actual improvement of K-12 education. The chapter traces these trends as corollaries in the authors’ own professional histories in teacher education.