By Dr. Amy Burkman, Senior Manager of Assessment & Accreditation, School of Education, American Public University System
Over the past year, significant shifts have reshaped how educator preparation programs are evaluated and how teacher candidates are assessed for certification. These changes reflect a broader move toward stronger accountability, clearer evidence of candidate readiness, and shared national expectations for what graduates of education programs should know and be able to do. For educator preparation programs and state education agencies, the evolving landscape has required updates to policies, program design, assessment practices, and documentation. The following outlines three major developments and considers their implications for programs that prepare teachers and other P–12 educators.
Council for the Advancement of Educator Preparation (CAEP): The merger of two longstanding accrediting organizations created a single, national specialized accreditor for educator preparation. CAEP’s standards emphasize the use of rigorous evidence to demonstrate program quality and candidate impact on P–12 learning. Rather than relying on isolated measures, CAEP encourages continuous improvement cycles, data-informed decision making, and clear documentation of how programs ensure candidates meet professional expectations. For institutions, this means aligning curriculum, clinical experiences, and assessment systems to produce coherent evidence that supports claims about candidate preparedness and program effectiveness.
Practically speaking, accreditation under this consolidated framework asks programs to think holistically about quality. Programs are expected to collect valid and reliable outcome data, show how faculty use evidence to improve instruction and curriculum, and document the link between candidate performance and the needs of local schools. The accreditation focus on transparent, evidence-based practice has prompted many educator preparation providers to revise assessment plans, strengthen partnerships with P–12 schools, and build centralized data systems to track candidate progress and outcomes over time.
Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP): The Degree Qualifications Profile offers a common set of expectations for what learners should achieve at associate, bachelor’s, and graduate levels. By describing learning outcomes across areas such as applied learning, specialized knowledge, and broad integrative knowledge, the profile gives programs a shared vocabulary for articulating degree-level expectations and for designing coherent curricula. For educator preparation, the DQP can function as a reference for aligning program learning outcomes, syllabi, and capstone experiences so that degree semantics match actual graduate capabilities.
Adopting a profile like this supports clarity for multiple audiences: prospective students, employers, P–12 partners, and accreditors. When programs map their courses and assessments to explicit degree-level expectations, they strengthen accountability and make it easier to communicate the value and purpose of their degrees. The DQP also helps institutions consider cross-program comparability and ensures that professional programs provide the kinds of advanced literacy, critical thinking, and applied skills expected at each credential level.
edTPA: edTPA is a performance-based assessment created by educators to evaluate a candidate’s readiness for classroom teaching. It centers on a portfolio of authentic artifacts—such as planning documents, recorded instruction, student work samples, and reflective commentaries—that demonstrate a candidate’s ability to plan, instruct, and assess diverse learners in specific subject areas. Submitted and scored through an external scoring provider, the assessment is intended to measure practical teaching skills and the effectiveness of instruction in promoting student learning.
For teacher preparation programs, edTPA has had several practical effects. Curriculum and field experiences are increasingly designed to ensure candidates can produce the types of evidence required in a teaching portfolio. Faculty development efforts focus on coaching candidates in instructional planning, assessment literacy, and reflective practice. Programs also build assessment timelines and support structures—such as advising, rehearsal teaching, and formative feedback—to help candidates meet the performance expectations embedded in the portfolio model.
Taken together, these trends—consolidated accreditation standards, a shared degree profile, and a performance-based candidate assessment—are reshaping how educator preparation programs operate. They emphasize transparency, measurable outcomes, and direct evidence of candidate impact on student learning. Programs that proactively align curricula, assessments, and clinical practice to these expectations are better positioned to demonstrate quality and to support candidate success in today’s accountability environment.
Staying current with these developments requires ongoing review of assessment systems, close collaboration with P–12 partners, and investment in faculty capacity to collect and use data for continuous improvement. By centering program design on coherent learning outcomes and authentic measures of teaching performance, educator preparation providers can maintain relevance and effectiveness while meeting the evolving expectations of accreditors, states, and the schools that hire their graduates.
About the Author Dr. Amy Burkman has more than 15 years of experience in K–12 education as a classroom teacher, librarian, and administrator. She has served as a professor of educational leadership and has provided professional development to education service centers and school districts in Texas. Dr. Burkman holds a Master’s Degree in Library Science from Texas Woman’s University and a doctorate from Texas Christian University.