When it was first conceived, the goals of the Teacher Preparation Data Model (TPDM) was to help traditional certification and alternate certification preparation programs to understand how not only how their students were progressing through the program, but also how the program was doing as a whole in meeting the needs of the communities that they support, including
The alliance took ownership of the model in late 2018 and through 2019 we worked with the initial pilot implementations and the budding community of preparation providers (through the TPDM work group) to understand the needs of the community and how the model could help. Some of the feedback from Principal and Superintendent focused programs was "what about us?" As we examined the model and talked with these providers the conclusion we came to was that the model could not support other types of educator preparation programs. The fact remained, however, that the model was very heavily skewed towards teacher, especially in name.
In 2020 we started work on revisions to the model based on the feedback we had received from the community as well as some adjustments which would bring the model more in line with Ed-Fi design principles and ready it for being included in the core Data Standard. Within this scope of work was fixing the naming issue. We weren't ready to totally do away with TPDM just yet (more on that in a bit), so the the name of the model itself did not change, but most everything else did. With the release of TPDM v1.0 in January 2021, teacher specific references were removed from the model (TeacherCandidate became Candidate, TeacherPreparationProvider became EducatorPreparationProvider, and so on).
Over the years TPDM has become a term to refer to anything related to Educator Preparation at the Alliance. We had the model the TPDM work group and in the beginning of 2021 we were set to introduce starter kits, powered by the data model. With the starter kits we made a conscious effort to focus them toward Educator Preparation Providers and not to mention teacher, unless it was model related.
You will still see TPDM scattered around, primarily in the technology