What is the Role of an Assessor for the CA TPA Evaluative Role of

							                What is the Role of an Assessor
                       for the CA TPA?


   The role of an assessor for the CA TPA is to conduct
   a fair and equitable assessment of each teacher
   candidate’s performance using professional judgment
   in conjunction with a standardized scoring protocol.



        Evaluative Role of the CA TPA Assessor

      • All teacher candidate responses are assessed
        with a standard task-specific rubric

      • Requires professional judgment

      • Assessor and student do not interact

      • Requires a level of awareness of preferences,
        expectations, and biases so that assessor
        judgments are fair and equitable

      • Purpose of assessment is to determine a fair and
        equitable SCORE for a teacher candidate’s
        responses




CGU: J. Ezaki            8/31/2006                p.1
                Why is it important to identify
                  and recognize our biases?

Bias in scoring is our opinions, assumptions and
judgments that interfere with fair and equitable
scoring.

   • To be fair
   • To protect against personal or societal biases
     interfering with fair judgment
   • To ensure our judgment of performances is based
     only on evidence presented by the teacher
     candidate, and nothing else
   • Because they have no relevance to assessing
     teaching practice


What can we do to control bias in scoring?
   • Work with the assumption that we all harbor
     biases
   • Be conscious of ways biases interfere with our
     judgments
   • Remove from our evaluations any factor that is not
     relevant to professional practice
   • Ensure that teacher candidates receive the fairest
     possible reading



CGU: J. Ezaki              8/31/2006               p.2
         Goal: Open, Honest Self-Examination

   • To find out what prompts your biases, not to prove
     that you have no biases

   • To control your biases during training /scoring

   • To become a better evaluator of teacher candidate
     responses – most critical for this process

   • To remember that this is not about you

   • To remember that this is about teacher candidates
     who have taken a risk submitting their responses
     for your review



Identify our personal biases and what prompts them
– all part of the problem and part of the solution.




CGU: J. Ezaki          8/31/2006                  p.3
                    Evidence

Evidence is a factual reporting of events. I may
include teacher candidate and student planning,
actions, and behaviors. It may also include
artifacts prepared by the candidate, students or
others. It is not clouded by personal opinion or
biases. Evidence is selected using professional
judgment by the assessor.

Good evidence is:
 • Factual
 • Representative
 • Relevant to the definition of good teaching

Descriptions of evidence do not offer an
interpretation of events; they merely record
them.

Evidence is uncontaminated by personal opinion or
preference (bias); a factual reporting consists of
concrete teacher and student behaviors, actions,
or artifacts that are based on fact.



CGU: J. Ezaki       8/31/2006                p.4
CGU: J. Ezaki   8/31/2006   p.5