PASS-PORT is a web-based system that provides college of education candidates, university faculty and administrative staff a tool to gather, demonstrate and evaluate the performance data on pre-service teachers and professional teachers during the first three years of service after graduation.

• PASS-PORT provides candidates a tool for the creation of standards-based portfolios, a mechanism for sending and receiving feedback on portfolios, and portability of portfolios to other universities and to state professional development systems.
• PASS-PORT provides university faculty with a system to collect data, manage and evaluate candidate performance based on coursework, field experiences and clinical practice. University faculty uses these data to improve their teaching, scholarship, and service.
• PASS-PORT provides institutions with a mechanism to directly address the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) Standards 2000 that require institutions to have a viable method of collecting and analyzing data on program qualifications, initial candidate and advanced graduate performance, and unit operations to evaluate and improve the unit and its programs.

How will PASS-PORT help Colleges of Education with NCATE accreditation?
PASS-PORT directly addresses the NCATE requirements that higher education institutions:

• have a viable performance assessment system in place that makes professional education programs accountable for demonstrating how they prepare teachers and support personnel to impact K-12 student learning (Standard 2);
• have coherent system to manage and evaluate field experiences and clinical practice of student interns (Standard 3);
• have a systematic means of collecting and analyzing faculty evaluation data and how faculty use these data to improve their teaching, scholarship and service (Standard 5);
• utilize current data for use in budgeting and program planning, faculty load/distribution/assignments.

PASS-PORT is being designed to help institutions meet the following NCATE standards:

NCATE 2000 Standard 2: Assessment System and Unit Evaluation
The unit has an assessment system that collects and analyzes data on the applicant qualifications, candidate and graduate performance, and unit operations to evaluate and improve the unit and its programs.

NCATE 2000 Standard 3: Field Experiences and Clinical Practice
The unit and its school partners design, implement, and evaluate field experiences and clinical practice so that teacher candidates and other school personnel develop and demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn.

NCATE 2000 Standard 5: Faculty Qualifications, Performance and Development
Faculty are qualified and model best professional practices in scholarship, service, and teaching, including the assessment of their own effectiveness as related to candidate performance; they also collaborate with colleagues in the disciplines and schools. The unit systematically evaluates faculty performance and facilitates professional development.

NCATE 2000 Standard 6: Unit Governance and Resources
The unit has the leadership, authority, budget, personnel, facilities, and resources including information technology resources, for the preparation of candidates to meet professional, state, and institutional standards.

Who provided funding for the development of PASS-PORT?
Funding for the initial development of PASS-PORT is made possible through a grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning (CITAL).

Who was involved in the development of PASS-PORT?
Louisiana deans of Colleges of Education and members of the Technology Consortium for Teacher Education (TCTE) provided much needed critical feedback on the functional design of the system.

Faculty and candidates in the Division of Education at Xavier University of Louisiana and faculty and candidates in the College of Education at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette contributed countless hours testing and providing ideas on how to enhance the functionality of the system.

The implementation team consisted of a working group of individuals from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette , Unversity of Louisiana System, and Xavier University of Louisiana. Learn more about the development team.

How does PASS-PORT dovetail with other Louisiana Teacher Quality Efforts?
PASS-PORT ties into systemic reform initiatives underway in Louisiana as a result of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s work including accountability, teacher quality, and student achievement.

PASS-PORT dovetails with PASS-PORT K-12 and other electronic support and evaluation efforts under development at the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE). PASS-PORT and systems developed at DOE will be designed to share data seamlessly. The result will be a mechanism for an individual’s performance data that is initially developed at the university level as a pre-service teacher candidate to be available as s/he continue professional development as in-service teachers. Later as the teacher returns to graduate school, data will be available once again at the university level in PASS-PORT.

PASS-PORT has been greatly inspired by the work of the Kentucky Department of Education which leads the nation in requiring its higher education institutions to implement performance assessment systems for their teacher preparation programs.