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What Really Happens in Professionally Accredited Schools of Education: It's Not Your Mother's Teacher Education

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 March 2006, 12:00 CST

WASHINGTON, March 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Get ready to reframe your mother's teacher education experience with a new paradigm for teacher preparation. A new report, Spotlight on Schools of Education, takes an early look at how institutions professionally accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) have developed assessment systems that track candidate attainment of the knowledge and skills outlined in NCATE requirements.

NCATE performance-based accreditation standards expect institutions to develop evidence-based practice that showcases and provides data on teacher candidate and other educator knowledge and skills. Since the inception of performance-based accreditation standards, announced in 2000 and instituted in 2001, NCATE accredited institutions have been developing detailed and comprehensive assessment systems, and are now reporting data on candidate performance from those systems.

This report summarizes a systematic investigation into the ways in which schools of education approach curriculum, assessment, and continuous improvement. Based on a review of 58 accreditation reports written in fall 2003 (one semester of reports), the book includes a description of NCATE expectations regarding candidate knowledge and skills, and of the assessment systems that provide data.

The report provides examples of how the institutions met the various elements of the requirements. How did the requirements impact the schools of education? Institutions report increased attention to candidate learning; increased faculty collaboration; and stronger alignment among standards, curriculum, instruction and assessment. Spotlight on Schools of Education sheds light on the exciting work going on inside NCATE-accredited schools of education and will help policymakers understand the essential role of teacher preparation.

NCATE is a leader in the reform of teacher preparation. The organization is the professional accrediting body for teacher preparation today, accrediting schools of education in 615 institutions, with almost 100 more that have applied for accreditation. Thirty-three national professional and policymaker organizations representing millions of Americans have committed themselves to high quality preparation through their membership in NCATE. NCATE partners with 48 states and two jurisdictions to increase the rigor of teacher preparation across the nation. The U.S Department of Education and the Council on Higher Education Accreditation recognize NCATE as a specialized accrediting body. NCATE accredited institutions produce two-thirds of the nation's new teacher graduates each year. Visit http://www.ncate.org for more information.

http://www.usnewswire.com

Source: U.S. Newswire

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