Passage Preparation Overview

Speaker: Nathan Estel

Nathan Estel: Hello, my name is Nathan Estel. I'm the Managing Director of Passage Preparation. I'm thrilled to be in this job and it's taken a lot of years to get here. I started as an eighth grade science teacher who was confused about why I needed to take certain courses or pass certain tests to get a license to teach and to teach the grades in subject areas that I wanted to. And in that journey, I was asking questions, what does the state sound like? And why is the state telling me I have to do this. So I applied for a job at the West Virginia Department of Education very early in my career. And I was lucky enough to get that job and it was sitting in that corner cubicle processing applications for licensure from teachers across the state that I began to really ask, why does it matter if you have this GPA? Why does it matter if you have this particular series of courses or this number of hours or this particular degree? And why does it matter that you passed this test? And by the way, what's on this test? That's so important uh that that we would hold up someone's license because they didn't pass it. And when I began asking those questions, policymakers, members of the State Board of Education, and certainly my superiors started to encourage me to continue to ask those questions. And I did, throughout my time at the West Virginia Department of Education, I progressed through a series of different positions that helped me to better understand why those questions, why I was asking those questions and ultimately the answers to those questions. And soon after leaving the Department of Education, I worked for both educational Testing service and the evaluation systems group of Pearson, the two biggest players in the teacher licensure assessment landscape. And during my time there, I had the opportunity to engage with colleagues from across the country, other states that were grappling with those same questions that I had been asking um and to gain a better understanding of what was covered on the test and why. And I know now what's covered on the test. And I know more importantly why that information is covered on the test. And that's what led me to Passage Preparation. A few years ago, I was given the opportunity to create a new test preparation product from the ground up. And that is exactly how it was described to me, a test preparation product. So I thought long and hard about what that should look like and how it could deliver high quality and affordable resources to any candidate who needed to demonstrate that they had the requisite knowledge to gain the keys to the classroom. That's why I'm here today and that's why I'm thankful that you're here learning more about our product and how we can help you.

Nathan Estel: During my time at both the West Virginia Department of Education and the years I spent in the assessment industry, I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people who were either directly or indirectly involved with the teacher licensure assessment space. And in that time, I heard a lot of candidates who were required to take the test, explain to me that they didn't fully understand what was on the test or they didn't understand how they were going to be assessed on test day. And it was through those conversations that I began to really think about, how could I best support those individuals, how could I best answer their question about what content is going to be on the test? So that's how we started passage preparation by looking at a single test in a single state with a group of educators asking how would you explain to a first year teacher or potentially to a student teacher, what content was gonna be covered on this test? And more importantly why it was important that they know that content before or as soon as they began teaching, that's how passage preparation started. And that's why we are where we are today.

Nathan Estel: Teaching is hard. And teacher licensure tests are equally as hard and they are for a reason, the public deserves to know that when someone's given the keys to the classroom that they understand the content they're charged with teaching. So what problem do we solve? By the time anyone takes these tests, it has probably been a few years since they've been exposed to a lot of the content that's covered on the test. So let me just take a step back and talk about how much content is covered on a particular test in a particular mathematics test. For instance, this is all of the information that someone needs to know to be able to teach a pre-algebra course or potentially a calculus course. So if you think back to your own experiences in your high school, uh as you matriculated through high school or potentially in college and all of that content that your teacher knew that's a lot to demonstrate in one setting that you have a firm understanding of. So if you matriculated through a traditional four year program, a lot of those math courses that you took the content that you'll need from those courses in your freshman and sophomore year are gonna be covered on that test that you're not taking to your senior year. But if you're changing careers and you have been in another industry before deciding that you want to answer your call to become a teacher and you enter into a, into an alternative certification program, you've been 10, 15, maybe 20 years away from that content. So what problem do we solve? We help demystify the content that's going to be covered on the tests. We don't replace the four year Baccalaureate degree. We certainly don't replace that advanced course work. But what we do is hopefully help you to understand what's going to be on the test, how it's going to be assessed and most importantly why it's important when you enter the classroom.

Nathan Estel: Passage preparation courses are built by teachers and for teachers. And let me take just a moment to unpack what that means. Yes, we have full time staff that are working on our in our content development team. But they're working with practicing teachers and teacher educators who've been charged with looking at the content, the domains and the competencies that are covered on any particular licensure test and explaining that and explaining it in a way that's important to an early career or first year teacher. So we say to them, imagine you were talking to a first year teacher and you're trying to explain to them numbers and operations. Yes, you could just explain to them numbers and operations, but explain it from the context of why it's important in the classroom. Why do your students, why do you need to know this kind of information so that your students will understand it better? But we take it a step further. A lot of other providers rely on a drill and kill method of just a asking, asking a series of questions and getting you familiar with the types of questions that you're going to be asked on the high stakes licensure test. We do that too, but we do it as a compliment to the rich content that we provide. That helps to explain again what content is gonna be covered on the test and why that content is important in the classroom.

Nathan Estel: Curriculum for passage preparation courses is really designed around the standards, competencies and domains that are covered on any teacher licensure test. So we look at the specific tests, what topics are going to be covered on it. And that lays out the progression of our courses. We align every module to every domain that's going to be covered on the course. And we work with expert teachers and teacher educators to develop that content in a way that's engaging informative and approachable.