As more American states move toward Teacher Performance Assessments (TPA) as a certification requirement for teachers, the questions of efficacy in relation to these assessments becomes more significant. Questions of the TPA’s ability to accurately function as an instrument of measuring teacher quality, and also questions of the programmatic and personal implications of the TPA must be considered as this assessment is put into practice widely as the standard for measuring teacher readiness.

In this systematic review, we look to literature that discusses several facets of TPAs including the effectiveness of portfolio compared to test based assessments, the efficacy of anonymous portfolio scoring, and the function of TPAs in student teaching experiences. The questions considered relate to the ability of TPAs to accurately reflect teaching practice, the personal and programmatic effects they produce when used as a formative or summative assessment, and the implications for making TPAs a standard certification requirement for teaching candidates. These implications not only affect the teacher candidate, but also the mentor teacher and university supervisor’s role in supporting the developing teachers. For the purposes of our review, formative assessments provide valuable, constructive feedback to student teachers prior to completing university coursework. Summative assessments are high-states, provide numerical score reports following coursework, and may function to determine teachers’ state licensure and livelihoods. 

The question of how teacher performance assessments function in student teaching experiences and state certification requirements is central to the problems discussed in the studies we reviewed. As various authors have posited, formative assessments are for learning, while summative assessments are of learning. (Black, P., & Wiliam, D., 1998; Harlen, W., 2005) The function of an assessment is determined by the manner in which it is used rather than in its design. We examined selected literature to study how performance assessments may function in a formative or summative manner, and when and why teacher candidates experienced increased stress and declining performance.

The use of TPAs as a certification requirement also has programmatic implications for teacher preparation institutions and teacher educators. Studies will be considered that both measure the effectiveness of TPAs as a tool, and also the lived experiences of those stakeholders who the requirement of TPA has affected. TPA is not a standard requirement across the United States, and in many states one may complete a teacher preparation degree program without being certified or licensed by the state; however a growing number of states are considering adding a TPA as part of their assessment protocol (AACTE, 2014b).  This literature review will allow us to gain a comprehensive understanding of how TPA functions throughout the United States, and the limitations and affordances of its use as an assessment of student teachers’ preparedness for classroom teaching.

The European Commission identifies determining standard teacher competencies an important step toward strengthening the professional quality of teachers in their July 2013 report. Countries across the EU are beginning to develop teacher performance evaluation systems, but the European Commission points out the tension between the usefulness of a standardized assessment system for teachers and the effects this system might have on narrowing the ways in which teaching is defined and assessed. In the United States, Teacher Performance Assessment has come to the forefront in teacher licensure. In Teacher Education Around the World: Changing Policies and Practices (2012), Darling-Hammond and Lieberman suggested that the creation of these TPAs could, "leverage improvements in both candidate competence and program improvement" (p. 167). As TPA becomes a more popular means for assessing teacher quality in the U.S., many of these implications may come to light and therefore be available to EU countries.  

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