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Board presses Pearson on equity and predictive validity as edTPA redesign rolls out
Summary
Board members asked whether the edTPA redesign reduces subgroup performance gaps and whether the assessment predicts classroom effectiveness. Pearson said diverse representation informed rubric validation and that historical subgroup differences were "about 1 to 1.5 actual score points," and pledged ongoing data collection and annual reporting.
Board members pressed Pearson for evidence the edTPA redesign would be fair across racial, ethnic and linguistic subgroups and whether portfolio performance predicts future classroom success.
Keisha Allen, an assistant professor representing higher-education teacher-education programs, asked how rubric validation accounted for teaching of linguistically, racially and ethnically diverse students. "We will be after this first operational year, we will have a report on the development and field test of edTPA essentials," Laurie Kroger said, adding that Maryland representatives participated on the national advisory committee that validated rubrics. Kroger also described accommodations to reduce writing burden for candidates — allowing bullet formats, voice-to-text responses and fewer uploads — to broaden accessibility for linguistically diverse candidates.
On subgroup performance, Pearson representatives said historical differences in scores between groups are visible but relatively small in magnitude. "We do see a performance difference in terms of groups. It tends to be about 1 to 1.5 actual score points," Kroger said. Jerry Deluca and a Pearson colleague explained that ongoing scorer training, double-scoring near cut scores and random reliability reads are part of their process to monitor and address scoring bias. Pearson said it will collect disaggregated data during operational rollout and produce validation reports after the first year of use.
Board members framed the questions around two central concerns: fairness (are different candidate groups passing at similar rates?) and utility (does passing edTPA correlate with later classroom success?). Pearson acknowledged limitations in its ability to conduct long-term predictive validity studies without partnering organizations that hold classroom-outcome data, but said published studies by university researchers exist and that Pearson is prepared to partner on such research.
