Teaching Channel Talks Episode 97: Raising the Bar in Teacher Certification (w/ Nathan Estel, Passage Preparation)

Dr. Wendy Amato: I’m your host, Wendy Amato, and as often as I can, I jump into conversations about topics that matter in education. And in this episode, oh gosh, I am excited to talk with you about teacher certification tests. My guest is Nathan Estill, the managing director of passage preparation. Nathan, welcome.

Nathan Estel: Thank you, Wendy.

It’s so good to be with you today.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Let’s talk about teacher certification tests. I’m not against having high standards. Are you?

Nathan Estel: Not at all. In fact, as a former practicing teacher and as someone who worked for a board of education charged with enforcing standards for entry into the profession, I actually believe that students deserve the high bar.

Dr. Wendy Amato: We talk sometimes as though the tests are bad things, and I don’t think they are. I want to be sure that the teachers in front of our students are amazing, that they have content knowledge, that they have instructional strategies. How do we know that our tests are actually accomplishing these things or measuring them properly?

Nathan Estel: First, I think that tests sometimes get the bad rap because they call out a problem. And I compare it to a doctor using a thermometer. If they don’t use the thermometer and they don’t know that you have a fever, it doesn’t mean that you’re not sick. So the test may be telling us something that we need to focus on and we don’t need to focus as much on the test, but everything that led up to the test.

Dr. Wendy Amato: So are you saying without testing, we may just be in denial about what’s happening in our classrooms?

Nathan Estel: I think as practitioners, we don’t, I don’t think we would necessarily be in complete denial, but this certainly gives us the data to take a look at and to diagnose where the problems may be. And it may be that some teachers are matriculating through systems and getting to the point of certification without the requisite knowledge about the content that they’re going to be licensed to teach and the test helps to tell that story.

Dr. Wendy Amato: It is an important story. Let’s accept that testing measures the right things and helps us to know that teachers are properly prepared for the classroom. What is passage prep about and how is it special?

Nathan Estel: That’s a question that I love to answer. So thank you for asking. Passage preparation is really a series of study guides and interactive practice tests that are delivered through courses.

That were designed by teachers that are aligned to the specific tests that are required in states across the United States.

Dr. Wendy Amato: What do you mean they’re designed as courses? The test prep that I know about is here are a bunch of released items from previous tests. So go and take them over and over again until you just memorize it.

Nathan Estel: We wanted to go beyond that when we started preparation, and we wanted to make some part of the assessment and educative tool, a tool that could be used as a learning instrument. So we take the content, publicly available content that’s going to be covered on the test, and we work with practicing teachers and teacher educators who have.

Real and recent experience working with beginning or aspiring teachers and ask them to break that content down Into manageable chunks as if they were teaching a course So that’s why we call them courses and we deliver them in an online learning management system Allowing people to matriculate through that course at their own pace asynchronously And measure their own progress as they do so

Dr. Wendy Amato: I’m going to share a secret right now with our podcast listeners.

So brace yourselves, everybody. This is the Wendy Amato confessional. I have taken at least one passage preparation course, and I loved being able to customize it based on my pre test results. So Nathan, share with everybody, please, how that works and help them understand why I found it so special.

Nathan Estel: Yeah, we try to embed in the course is just those good practices of helping to direct your own learning.

So the very first thing that you do is get an overview of what’s going to be covered on the test and how much of that content is going to be covered in which specific part of the test and you jump straight into a diagnostic assessment. And from that diagnostic assessment, you see how well you do on all of the different content categories or domains that are going to be covered on that test.

And then you create your own journey. You create your own study path to determine where you want to spend the majority of your time in the course or where you think you might be able to skim over some of the material because you did really well on the diagnostic assessment and really need to focus on other areas of the content.

Dr. Wendy Amato: My personal strategy was to start with the stuff that was toughest for me. I wanted to just jump in and really take my time in the areas where I had the opportunity to grow the most. But other people may choose to start where they have some confidence and work in the other direction, or mix it up, right?

Nathan Estel: Absolutely. And we see students enrolled in our courses go in either direction.

Dr. Wendy Amato: That’s great. Tell me about the experience of the course. What can we expect along the way?

Nathan Estel: I’ve already mentioned the diagnostic assessment and then building your own study plan. And then you Dive straight into the modules.

And so how do we develop a module again? We asked the teachers who were designing the course to align it to the content that is covered in that particular domain or standard. And I’m using those terms interchangeably because different tests across the United States do so in their test frameworks. So as you matriculate through each of those modules.

You watch videos that are delivered by teachers. You read some information or some texts that we have developed. You see a lot of graphics, but you also answer a lot of questions in our checks for understanding. And those are designed to be little formative checks to ask yourself, did I really pay attention to what I just read?

Did I really hear what I just watched when I watched the video? So that you have your own. self assessment before you matriculate through and take those more summative end of module assessments or certainly the summative end of course practice assessments.

Dr. Wendy Amato: That check for understanding is what I really wanted us to land on for a moment and to think about what that means throughout the learning journey.

A check for understanding is a significant benchmark to tell you whether to go on or go back, isn’t it?

Nathan Estel: Exactly, and then that’s what we’ve designed it to do. We also know that, we could get into the practice of just clicking through, but the checks for understanding are very intentionally designed not to look like popular, uh, licensure tests like the Praxis or like tests that are used in Texas or New York or any other state that has a customized test, but they are a different type of activity.

So you may be asked to point to something that’s happening in a video or on a picture. You may be asked to point to something on a particular map, or you may be asked to enter numbers into a mathematical equation rather than selecting from the more traditional multiple choice. So we’re really intentionally trying to get your brain to focus on the content in a way that’s different than what you’re going to see on the test, because we’re going to give you opportunities to do that as you matriculate through, as

Dr. Wendy Amato: I’m grateful for a test prep that uses what we know about teaching and learning to design something that will actually help us learn.

Nathan Estel: That was the goal.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Nathan, tell me about the course menu that you have, the kinds of tests that are represented there, and how it grows.

Nathan Estel: We’ve done a careful analysis of the different types of tests that are used in different states.

And we align our courses and our strategy based on those most popular and highest needs tests in those states. So whether it’s a state that uses the Praxis exam that we’ve already mentioned, or developing courses specifically for Illinois, or Michigan, or New York, or Ohio, we’re really trying to serve the the students.

The largest population that we can by in our course development schedule.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Following up on the course development and thinking about the range of tests that are represented there, I’d love to hear more about the people who have informed the development of the courses and some of the guidance that you’ve offered because you have really extensive experience in this industry.

Nathan Estel: Wendy, to answer your question, I’m going to take a moment to pause and talk about my journey that led me to passage preparation. This is not an

Dr. Wendy Amato: accidental role. Your leadership of this company is because you are the right person. Now brag a little bit for me, Nathan.

Nathan Estel: I worked, after I left the classroom, I worked for the West Virginia Board of Education and I was charged with shepherding policies around the state board’s requirements for the preparation and licensure Professional and paraprofessional personnel in the state there.

I left and I worked for both of the testing companies and I say both because there’s only two that do educator licensure assessments. And that’s educational testing service or ETS and then Pearson throughout all of those years, whether with the board of education or with either of the testing companies.

I talked to people who the Wanted to pass the test and they asked me the question. Just tell me what’s on the test. And I’m by no means telling anybody what’s on the test. But we’re taking the publicly available test frameworks and demystifying that content. We’re breaking it down into manageable pieces of information that someone can.

launch into and manage for themselves on their own time.

Dr. Wendy Amato: ETS and Pearson are certainly organizations that you’d want to have in your background to lead in a role like yours. How has that informed some of the big decisions that you’ve made for the company?

Nathan Estel: Really, ETS and Pearson taught me a lot, but I rely a lot on my time as a classroom teacher and my work in doing policy about classroom teaching practices, and it’s to rely heavily on classroom teachers.

So when we set out to think about what the core structure would look like and how we would deliver the content we relied on teachers to tell us what was best for teachers, and that’s really at the center of everything we do. We pull in practicing teachers and teacher educators to be part of what we call an educator success network.

And we ask them to rely on their experiences. Maybe taking the test or what they remember from being a beginning teacher, but also working with aspiring teachers, either at the clinical experience or in their first year as their mentors, if you will. And really present the content in a way that is really meaningful to say, this isn’t just something you need to know because the state says you need to know it on the test.

This is something that you need to know because you need to know it to be an effective practicing educator.

Dr. Wendy Amato: One of the things I love about PASSAGE is that it’s not just for initial certification or for people who are entering the field. This also supports people with current teaching roles and existing licenses.

You’ve shared a story in the past about a personal aha moment. And I wonder if you can share that with me now.

Nathan Estel: Yeah, my f First year teaching I quickly and came to the unfortunate realization that I was teaching eighth grade science, but that many of the students in my classroom were not able to read text or information that I put in front of them.

And I quickly realized that. I did not have the requisite training to teach literacy in the content and recognize that I needed to access real time professional development to better understand the strategies and the techniques that I would have to embed in my practice to introduce those those concepts and the science content that I was trying to deliver.

Dr. Wendy Amato: That’s significant. There are plenty of teachers who realize that their student populations are shifting, or they go to a new school, a new district and the expectations are a little bit different in that program. So there really is a need for us to be ready for our own continuous improvement evolving our practice.

Nathan Estel: Absolutely. And that’s why we’re so happy to have partnered with the teaching channel and to deliver to provide access to your video resource library, to anyone who completes a passage preparation course, because that learning really doesn’t stop. As we’ve just said, when you get the license to teach or was like, I always refer to it, the keys to the classroom, really that’s when the learning begins.

And I think that’s why the relationship between passage preparation and the teaching channel is such a good one.

Dr. Wendy Amato: I’m excited about that one too. I love seeing instruction in action especially when you can watch a video multiple times and ask yourself different kinds of questions each time.

Maybe that’s part of why I like passage so much also is you’re really there to learn, not just to pass the test, but gosh, what a perfect combination to do both.

Nathan Estel: And on the other side of that and this is a little intimidating because we have practicing educators who are looking to expand their credentials.

So you have someone who may have taught in the elementary education setting for a number of years who decides they want to teach secondary ed and they’re faced with the same daunting task that a, Teacher matriculating through a teacher preparation program for the first time would be faced with, and that’s passing the licensure exam.

So those practicing teachers come to us, enroll in our course and prepare for that licensure test to expand their credentials. And I say that’s a little intimidating because you’ve got these expert educators who are now taking your course. And you know that they’re going to have some ideas, but we welcome those ideas.

We love to hear from people that say you could do this a little differently, or maybe you could do this better. What we really like to hear is that was done really well and you really helped me pass the test.

Dr. Wendy Amato: I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you about partnership. What does a partnership look like when you talk about getting candidates through their testing successfully?

Nathan Estel: We love our partnerships and when I think what you’re the partnerships that you’re getting at here are partnerships with educator preparation providers. And those ones based at the university. Those could be alternative routes to certification. But we also like partnerships with or school districts because.

We’re learning as we do, as we partner with these folks about what they really need what kinds of data do they need from us? So we’re able to supply them because the study guides and practice tests are delivered as courses, as we’ve already talked about, we’re able to deliver to them really rich data about.

How their candidates are doing as they’re matriculating through the course. And it’s sometimes a real aha moment, particularly for our partners in the ed prep space to see who’s accessing the courses, what they’re doing with them once they get into them and how they’re performing on the practice tests.

Dr. Wendy Amato: LEAs, SEAs, alternative certification providers, traditional university models, everybody’s looking for data these days.

Nathan Estel: Yeah. Yeah. And we’re happy to be able to provide it. And we think it’s a real symbiotic relationship because we’re learning as much from them as they are from us.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Your commitment to ongoing learning is part of what we need in education, all parts of education.

If you had a call to action for the education community related to teacher certification testing, what might that call to action be?

Nathan Estel: It’s what drove me to develop the company. And it’s my belief that the, when we’ve already talked about it a little bit, the profession and the students that are, that is helping deserves a high standard, but everyone deserves an opportunity to meet that standard.

So my call to action would be look for ways that you can help people who are trying to get into the education profession, if it’s a word of encouragement. Or if it’s telling them how hard these licensure tests are going to be, you really need to be prepared, just be there for them, put yourself in their place, and help to provide them that guidance that maybe you wish you would have had at that point.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Is there some guidance that you wish you had in your early days?

Nathan Estel: Absolutely. Absolutely. Some of it has to do with how hard that biology test was going to be, but a lot of it has to do with, there’s a lot of different students in your class, and they all learn in very different ways, and a lot of different facts and pieces of information are Going to be missed on them.

Unless you let them know that you care about why they’re in their class, your classroom. And ultimately you care about them.

Dr. Wendy Amato: What you’re describing right now, and that focus on care is what I see woven into passage preparation as well. You care about making sure that teachers do more than just pass the task.

You want them to have deep understanding to be effective and be what they had imagined becoming when they chose. The field

Nathan Estel: that’s really important to us, and I appreciate you calling that out.

Dr. Wendy Amato: For those of you listening, I’m just going to tell you, get passage prep, give it a try, recommend it to others, bring it to your program.

This is the solution that we’ve all been waiting for. And the answer is not to get rid of testing. The answer is to make sure that the tests are properly showing the competencies that we expect our teachers to have.

Nathan Estel: Absolutely.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Thank you for being a great guest today. I enjoyed this conversation.

Nathan Estel: Thank you. Me too. I look forward to continuing it.

Dr. Wendy Amato: To our fellow educators. Thank you for being with us. If you’d like to explore the topics that Nathan Estill and I have discussed today, please check out the show notes at teachingchannel. com slash podcast. Be sure to subscribe on whatever listening app you use, it will help others to find us.

I’ll see you again soon for the next episode. Thanks for listening.