PRINCETON, New Jersey, Dec. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — Since ETS administered its first Georgia Assessments for the Certification of Educators® (GACE®) assessments in October 2013, in collaboration with the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (GaPSC), the program has continued to evolve. Building upon the initial offering of 45 test titles, and the recent introduction of a first-of-its-kind Educator Ethics Assessment, the GACE Teacher Leadership assessment launched in November.

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“The GACE Teacher Leadership assessment measures the critical leadership roles that teachers play in contributing to student and school success,” said George Powell, Vice President and COO of Teacher Licensure & Certification Programs at ETS. “It consists of six tasks that are scored according to task-specific rubrics and address specific standards within the Georgia Teacher Leadership Program Standards.”

The tasks are:

• Task 1: Adult Learning and the Collaborative Culture
• Task 2: Research for the Improvement of Practice’
• Task 3: Professional Learning
• Task 4: Observation and Use of Assessment Data
• Task 5: Collaboration with Families and the Community
• Task 6: Collaborative Teams and Advocacy

“Task responses are entered in a private, secure online submission system,” explains Jan Ruthven, Senior Director of the GACE Program. “Candidates seeking to earn a Lead Professional Certificate are granted eligibility to test by their program providers.”

This assessment addresses specific standards within the GaPSC’s Teacher Leadership Program Standards (PDF) and brings to fruition ETS’s work and contribution to the Teacher Leadership Consortium, which established the Teacher Leader Model Standards.

The GaPSC made the decision to create a Teacher Leadership assessment that mirrors the knowledge and skills set teacher leaders must have, so the decision was made to use a portfolio assessment rather than the traditional selected response format. “Under Georgia’s new Tiered Certification System, the Lead Professional certificate level will identify those educators prepared to support Induction Level teachers,” comments David Hill, GaPSC’s Director of Educator Preparation and Certification Divisions. Hill went on to point out that “successful schools have a cadre of highly skilled teachers equipped to lead school improvement work in the school learning community.”

Candidates can now register for the spring 2015 testing window and are to submit their responses online during the following submission window:

Spring 2015 Testing:
Registration: Open until May 15, 2015
Submission Window: January 18, 2015–May 31, 2015

For more information, please visit http://gace.ets.org/teacher_leadership/about/.

About ETS
At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series® assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org