For past two decades, there has been a growing national concern about teacher quality. This presentation discusses Connecticut's Beginning Educator Support and Training Program (BEST) and emulation of its assessment component by a medium sized department of education. The support component of BEST requires that all school districts provide assistance to novice teachers through their mentor teachers. The assessment part of BEST mandates that in order to obtain Provisional Educator Certification, the second level of state's three tiered structure, all new teachers provide evidence of their teaching competencies. This much needed evidence is provided through the development of a teaching portfolio. The portfolio contains five to eight hours of implementation of an instructional unit, lesson descriptions, videotaped segments of a lesson, samples of student work with corrective teacher feedback, and reflective commentaries on the teaching and learning that took place during the unit instruction in one of the classes taught by the teacher. The portfolio measures mastery of teaching competencies as defined by Connecticut's Common Core of Teaching. Every year, approximately 3000 teachers submit their portfolios and about 85% of them pass this assessment (CSDE, 2006). In endeavors to prepare our teacher candidates for BEST, we have introduced BEST like performance assessment in our graduate and undergraduate elementary education program. The anecdotal data indicate that when our graduates have to participate in BEST, they feel better prepared than their peers. Appended are: (1) Class Profile Form for Teaching Portfolio; and (2) Tips for Videotaping. (Contains 1 figure.)