Fresno Assessment of Student Teachers: A Teacher Performance Assessment that Informs Practice

Traditional measures of teachers ’ competency have been widely criticized for their lack of authenticity and predictive validity (Darling-Hammond, 2001; Porter, Youngs, & Odden, 2001). There is little evidence regarding the technical soundness of traditional teacher licensure tests and little research documenting the validity of such tests for identifying competent teachers or effective teaching (Mitchell, Robinson, Plake, & Knowles, 2001). Growing evidence indicates that performance assess-ments better evaluate instructional practices than these traditional as-sessments (Mitchell et al., 2001) and that performance assessments can serve as valuable professional learning experiences (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000). Performance assessments allow for the evaluation of both the process used in solving a task and the product itself (Lane & Stone, 2006) and include evidence from actual teaching practice to potentially provide direct rather than inferred evaluation of teaching ability (Pecheone & Chung, 2006a). In 1998 California passed Senate Bill (SB) 2042 requiring teacher candidates to successfully complete a Colleen W. Torgerson is the associate dean and a special education faculty member, Susan R. Macy is a full-time lecturer following a long career as a special educator, school site principal, and school board member, Paul Beare is the dean, and David E. Tanner is a professor in the Departmen