Georgia Professional Standards Commission Meeting Report - November 2024

The Georgia Professional Standards Commission (GaPSC) met virtually for committee meetings Nov. 13 and in person for the full commission meeting Nov. 14.

The meeting began with commissioners honoring victims of the recent tragedy at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.

GaPSC Executive Secretary Matt Arthur announced his retirement as GaPSC executive secretary, effective at the end of 2024. PAGE would like to thank Arthur for his service to Georgia educators in his years leading GaPSC.

As he has done in recent GaPSC meetings, Arthur continued to stress the need for educators to participate in GACE development.

Shortly before this report was published, Gov. Brian Kemp named Dr. Jody Barrow, a former school superintendent and current deputy director of the Georgia School Superintendent’s Association (GSSA), the new executive secretary. 

GaPSC Seeks Your GACE Input

The GACE exam is developed by Georgia educators and those who prepare Georgia educators and is aligned with Georgia’s standards. Educator and faculty involvement is critical for developing professional certification assessments that are reflective of Georgia’s approved standards and ensuring fairness. 

The GaPSC seeks certified educators and those who prepare educators to apply or nominate others to serve on GACE development, fairness review, and standard-setting committees. To apply or nominate colleagues, click the button below. 

Apply or Nominate Colleagues

GACE Update

Anne Marie Fenton, director of educator assessment at GaPSC, presented information about the upcoming GACE update. The final testing window for content assessments for teaching, service, and Educational Leadership (Tier I) on the current GACE assessment closes June 15, 2025. GaPSC will announce the transition dates for the Ethics Assessment, Teacher Leadership, and Performance Assessment for School Leaders (PASL) later. To maintain comparability, those taking the GACE exam must pass all parts of the assessment with the same testing supplier for the assessment to count towards certification.  

Fenton’s full presentation can be found here.

Literacy

Among the major changes to GACE will be the addition of new assessments related to literacy and the Science of Reading.

Testlets

The new GACE exam will introduce a “testlet” model, making Georgia the first state to implement it. Teslets allow the exam to be divided into smaller parts. This new model will allow candidates to take the assessment in one sitting, take each testlet separately, or take selected groups of testlets. Candidates can also retake individual testlets rather than retaking the entire exam.

Preparation Resources

GaPSC will be providing numerous preparation resources to both GACE test takers and the facility of educator preparation programs.

Educator Workforce Report

Educator Preparation Division Director Dr. Penney McRoy shared educator workforce statistics with commission members. To access her full presentation, click here.

Unfortunately, Georgia has 6,500 reported unfilled positions statewide, including positions left vacant and those filled with educators who are not fully certified. This accounts for an 11.8% increase in reported unfilled positions from Academic Year (AY) 2023 and AY2024. McRoy shared the following charts:

On the positive side, McRoy reported a 41% increase in the number of in-state teaching program enrollees in Georgia’s teacher preparation programs since AY2016, which includes both traditional in-state programs and non-traditional in-state programs. When adding out-of-state preparation programs, the increase is even higher, as evidenced by the following chart:

When discussing teaching preparation program completers for both in-state and out-of-state programs, the numbers are also increasing:

McRoy shared that 87.5% of Georgia teacher preparation program completers teach in Georgia public schools at some point in their career. New teachers who were prepared in Georgia preparation programs are retained at a greater rate than all new teachers after five years in the profession:

McRoy closed with the following slide, sharing ideas for supporting the teacher pipeline even further:

Ethics

Commissioners were shown an example of a series of Code of Ethics videos on the GaPSC's website. All ethics videos can be found here.

The commission approved all recommendations for the cases on the agenda without discussing specific cases.

Next Meeting The next committee meetings are virtual on Dec. 11. The next commission meeting is virtual on Dec. 12.  The full calendar of 2024/2025 GaPSC meetings can be found HERE.