Student Teaching and the edTPA: What Teacher Candidates Must Complete

What student teaching involves

Student teaching is the supervised classroom practicum that closes out your educator preparation program. It usually runs a full semester, 12 to 16 weeks, placed with a cooperating teacher in a real K-12 classroom. You start by observing and helping with small groups, then gradually take over full lesson planning, instruction, and classroom management under your mentor's supervision.

A university supervisor visits periodically to observe and evaluate you against your state's teaching standards. Your final evaluation from this placement, combined with your coursework and any required exams, determines whether your program recommends you for licensure.

What the edTPA measures

The edTPA is a standardized performance assessment developed by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity in partnership with teacher educators nationwide. Instead of a written test, it asks you to document your actual teaching through three linked tasks.

• Planning: you submit lesson plans for a learning segment along with a commentary explaining your instructional choices.

• Instruction: you submit video clips of yourself teaching those lessons.

• Assessment: you submit samples of student work along with your analysis of what students learned and the feedback you gave them.

Subject-specific versions exist for elementary literacy, secondary math, special education, and other fields, each scored against rubrics tailored to that content area.

Why states use it

Student teaching evaluations differ by mentor teacher and university supervisor, which makes them hard to compare across programs. The edTPA gives states one consistent measure, scored by people with no personal stake in a specific candidate, to check whether every new teacher can plan, teach, and assess a real lesson before they run a classroom of their own.

How scoring works

Trained, calibrated scorers, not your cooperating teacher or university supervisor, grade your portfolio against a set of rubrics that vary by subject area, each scored on its own numeric scale. Your state sets its own passing cut score, so the same portfolio could pass in one state and fall short in another.

Cost and logistics

Registration costs $300, according to Teachers Test Prep . Many educator preparation programs distribute vouchers that cover all or part of this fee, so check with your program before you pay out of pocket. You submit your portfolio online during a submission window tied to your program's calendar, and scores typically return within a few weeks. If you need to resubmit a task, budget for an added per-task fee on top of your original registration, and confirm the retake window with your program since it often ties to certification deadlines.

How placements and support are arranged

Your program's field placement office typically arranges your student teaching site in partnership with local school districts, matching you with a cooperating teacher in your subject area and grade level. You may get some input on location or grade band, but the final placement usually depends on which schools have space and a qualified mentor available that semester.

Most educator preparation programs run edTPA seminars or workshops alongside student teaching, walking you through each task, sharing scoring rubrics, and reviewing sample commentaries before you film or submit anything. Attend these sessions even if they feel repetitive. Familiarity with the exact rubric language is what separates a passing score from a resubmission.

Requirements change state by state

Whether you need to pass the edTPA, and what score counts as passing, depends entirely on your state, and states revisit these policies often. New York required the edTPA for years, then replaced it in 2022 with a broader requirement: programs must build their own teacher performance assessment into student teaching, though many still use the edTPA itself to satisfy it, according to the New York State Education Department .

Maryland moved the other direction. The state now requires a performance assessment for every teaching area, with a transition period running through August 31, 2026, during which candidates submit the edTPA, the Praxis PPAT, or the Praxis PLT, according to WeAreTeachers . Starting September 1, 2026, edTPA becomes the required option in Maryland.

Confirm your own state's current requirement directly with your educator preparation program or state department of education before you plan your student teaching semester around it.

State policy keeps shifting on both ends. Illinois eliminated its edTPA requirement for in-state program completers in 2025, while Nevada currently has no edTPA requirement at all, according to WeAreTeachers and edTPA's own Nevada page . Two new teachers can face entirely different portfolio requirements depending only on which state they train in.

Tips for passing

• Start planning your learning segment weeks before you film, so your lesson plans and commentary line up cleanly with what you teach.

• Choose a lesson where students talk and work visibly. Scorers need to see student thinking, not only you presenting.

• Use the academic language from the rubrics in your written commentaries, since scorers grade against that exact language.

• Ask your program for local scoring support or a subject-specific handbook before you submit.

• Back up your video files and written commentaries in more than one place before your submission window closes, since technical issues do not extend deadlines.