Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA)

Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA)

The Teacher Performance Assessment (CalTPA or edTPA) is an in-depth performance assessment of all aspects of teaching in a selected content area. A Teacher Performance Assessment is required for all teacher candidates in the State of California. At UC Santa Cruz, we have elected to use the CalTPA or edTPA, depending on credential area. 

The Performance Assessment determines teacher candidate competency in the areas of planning, instructing, and assessing. Candidates will plan and teach learning segments, while video-recording their interactions with students during instruction. They will assess student learning throughout the learning segment, and then submit a written explanation of and reflection on various task components. This will be evaluated using rubrics especially developed for each task.

TPA Contact Information

All TPA-related email and questions should be directed to: 

 For content-related questions ONLY – contact
 Educ-200/201/202 instructor 

What is the Teacher Performance Assessment?

The edTPA is a roughly one-week unit (~5 lessons) Teacher candidates complete three Tasks:

1. Planning— Teacher candidates submit a lesson plan for each day of the unit, including assessments. You describe your rationale for the plans’ design and how it meets the needs of your particular students. The plans must have a central focus (see reverse).
2. Instructing— Teacher candidates submit about 15 minutes of video (usually 2 clips) of your teaching during the unit and you describe your strategies for student engagement, building understanding and creating a supportive environment.
3. Assessing— Teacher candidates assess students (with a test, essay, performance, quiz, creative project…) and analyze the performance of the whole class, subgroups, and 3 focus students (whose work you submit). You describe the feedback you gave students afterwards. You explain your next steps for instruction based on these assessment results. 

As of July 2008, California statute (Chap. 517, Stats. 2006) requires all candidates for a preliminary Multiple and Single Subject Teaching Credential to pass an assessment of their teaching performance with K-12 public school students as part of the requirements for earning a teaching credential. This assessment of teaching performance is designed to measure the candidate's knowledge, skills and ability with relation to California's Teaching Performance Expectations (TPEs), including demonstrating his/her ability to appropriately instruct all K-12 students in the Student Academic Content Standards. All candidates who start a Commission-approved multiple and single subject teacher preparation program as of July 1, 2008 must meet the teaching performance assessment requirement.