As part of greater reform efforts around teacher licensure, PESB has contracted with Educational Testing Services (ETS) to create an assessment of effective teaching called ProTeach. This assessment is neither subject nor grade-level specific. ETS has committed over $5.5 million in development for the new assessment.

The final composite score of ProTeach will be used to award Washington’s Professional Certificate. For teachers working on Washington’s Residency Certificate – this includes all new teachers – the Professional Certificate is mandatory. Those who do not attain the certificate will lose their credential to teach in Washington.

The primary purpose of the ProTeach assessment is to identify effective teachers. PESB is requesting a $150,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to hire an outside expert to analyze the ProTeach assessment’s signal within student academic success measured by the state’s broadband student tests.

The project is designed to answer four clear and direct questions:

1) How much, if any, of the variation in student achievement attributable to teachers is captured by the ProTeach composite score?

2) Are there ways to re-weight the twelve subcategories of the ProTeach assessment so they capture more of the variance in student achievement?

3) Does the proposed ProTeach pass/fail cutline capture teachers that are less effective measured by student achievement?

4) Is the composite score differentially predictive for student subgroups, grade levels, or subjects?