ABSTRACT
Para-educational enterprises are constituents that operate outside the mainstream of higher education. To demonstrate privatization of public education, candidates must first take and fail the $300 Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) portfolio assessment in order to take the $119 Assessment of Teaching Skills—Written. New York had required teacher candidates to take a series of qualifying examinations to demonstrate their teaching proficiency. The results from these examinations, such as the Content Specialty Tests, Educating All Students examination, Academic Literacy Skills Test, and the edTPA, which was developed by The Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), are all reported as part of the program's demonstration of candidate competency and program effectiveness. In actuality, however, the standards are the tools for exploitation of academic freedom of both individuals' and states' rights and are generally ineffective, vague concepts of what students and teachers should be able to do.
