Performance Gates for Candidate Proficiency
Texas Wesleyan University
Overview of the Practice
Texas Wesleyan University’s performance gates for teacher residency candidates provide a progression of skills that is intentionally sequenced to guide host teachers, site coordinators/supervisors, and administrators in the development of teacher residents. These performance gates not only meet the requirements in Texas Administrative Code (TAC) for residency candidates to demonstrate mastery of certain educator standards at four structured benchmarks in order to progress to the next level of responsibility for student instruction, but strategically outlines a progression of skills aligned to these benchmarks and provides support for candidates to meet them
Planning, Implementation, and Monitoring
This practice was designed by Mrs. Aileen Martina, the residency coordinator, and Dr. Elizabeth Ward, the Director of Field Experience. Texas Wesleyan uses a modified version of the T-TESS for the evaluation of teacher candidates and this instrument served as the foundation for the development of the performance gate requirements. The sixteen dimensions of the T-TESS were divided into prerequisite skills and more advanced skills to provide areas of focus for each performance gate phase of the residency clinical experience.
The site coordinators/supervisors lead the implementation of the practice. Host teachers and administrators are trained on how to use the Performance Gate Progression to support the teacher resident growth in their ongoing evaluation of the teacher resident during their residency experience. All evaluators are asked to prioritize their reinforcements and refinements to the candidate based on the focus skills outlined in each performance gate phase of the residency experience. The site coordinator/supervisor reviews feedback given to residents from the host teachers and administrators to ensure consistency in execution.
The site coordinator/supervisor uses the host teacher weekly evaluations, verbal feedback from host teachers and administrators, and data from informal and formal evaluations to consistently review the teacher resident’s progress toward meeting the upcoming benchmark. The site coordinator/supervisor, with the assistance of the Director of Field experience, analyzes the data from the various sources of information and shares the findings with stakeholders during the quarterly governance meetings. The data is also shared with EPP faculty and staff to inform the EPP curriculum and programming.
Impact on Teacher Preparation
Strong performance gates ensure that teacher residents are provided with feedback on an agreed upon set of skills to focus on during the four residency phases. Host teachers, administrators, and site coordinators/supervisors are able to provide more consistent and aligned feedback to the teacher resident. Teacher residents report feeling less stress about their formal observations, because they are focused on a sequenced subset of T-TESS skills as they progress through their residency experience. Ultimately, the implementation of the performance gates has led to more consistent growth in the teacher residents and higher levels of readiness at the end of the program.
Aligned Resource
Performance Gates and Interventions
Implementation of required performance gates for teacher residents, along with interventions to support candidates to achieve proficiency.