One potentially promising approach to evaluating the quality of beginning teachers is
the development of new performance assessments for teacher licensing that can both assess
readiness to teach and, some research suggests, leverage improvements in preparation as
well. After the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards created a new
performance-based approach for assessing veteran teachers in the early 1990s, several
states—including California, Connecticut, and Oregon—created performance assessments
for beginning teacher licensure. Building further on the work in California, a recently
formed group of 27 states has formed a Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium to
develop a nationally available assessment that can be used for purposes of initial licensure
and program accreditation across the country (Darling-Hammond 2010)