Campbell University Teacher Education candidates earned a 100 percent pass rate on the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) across 13 content areas, the School of Education & Human Sciences announced in May.
Their performance was 16 percent higher than North Carolina’s state pass rate and 26 percent higher than the national pass rate.
The edTPA is a national, subject-specific portfolio-based assessment of teaching performance used by teacher preparation programs to measure the skills and knowledge of beginning teachers. The portfolio was developed by Stanford University faculty and staff at the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) and candidates applying for initial licensure in North Carolina are required to take and pass edTPA. The portfolio is completed during a candidate’s student teaching experience and submitted for external scoring by content experts at SCALE/Pearson.
North Carolina has required new teachers to pass edTPA since 2018. Campbell University teacher candidates across all programs — traditional, residency and online — have consistently scored higher than state and national averages each year.
Faculty in the Education Department work to ensure that concepts of best teaching practice (such as those measured by edTPA) are deeply embedded in course curriculum and field experiences, said School of Education & Human Sciences Dean Dr. Al Bryant.
“The result is that candidates are consistently well prepared to meet the needs of students and impact learning,” he said. “Passage rates on the edTPA — which measures a beginning teachers’ ability to plan effective lessons, deepen student learning, and effectively use student assessment data to inform practice — reflect the quality of instruction in education courses, as well as the caliber of candidates completing education programs at Campbell University.”
Campbell’s counseling programs also had a 100 percent pass rate this past year on its national exams.
“I attribute the high passage rate to the quality of instruction from our counseling faculty,” Bryant said. “They are all fully credentialed and take the education of their students very seriously. They have designed the counseling program in such a way that it adequately covers all the topic areas to be assessed. The students graduate well prepared to enter their chosen profession.”
Bryant said the high pass rates say a lot about the quality of Campbell’s program, as well as the preparation of its graduates. For students looking for a program to apply to, it says when they complete the program, they will be prepared to pass their professional exam and feel confident in the skills they have learned.
“For employers, the high pass rates confirm that the candidates they interview have come from a quality program,” he said. “They feel assured that our program produces highly prepared graduates who will be able to hit the ground running.”