On Building a Unified System of Accreditation in Teacher Education

Abstract

As of September 2003, there are officially two recognized accreditors for teacher education programs in the United States, each with a distinctly different approach to accreditation. The Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC), the more recently developed accreditor, has been criticized for promoting "accreditation shopping," lacking standards, illegitimacy, insensitivity to diversity, and divisiveness. TEAC's position on each of these issues is explicated along with an analysis of other issues that in contrast to the foregoing, are genuine and truly distinguish the two accreditors. An exploration of the differences and similarities between TEAC and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education suggests the ingredients of a unified accreditation system.

Avaliação docente em língua inglesa: uma proposta de ação

“…Nos últimos vinte anos, a avaliação do professor tornou-se um tema importante, como mostram os trabalhos de Dunkin (1997), Cochram-Smith (2001), Freitas (2003), Murray (2005), Sivell (2005), entre muitos outros. Segundo Porter, Youngs e Odden (2001), esse tipo de avaliação tem, basicamente, três objetivos.…”

An accreditation dilemma: The tension between program accountability and program improvement in programmatic accreditation

“…It has over 150 members and has accredited over sixty teacher education programs in over forty states. The system balances three factors in a single system: (1) valid evidence that graduates are qualified, competent, and caring teachers; (2) evidence that the program has a quality control system that works as designed and improves program quality; and (3) evidence that the program has the capacity for quality as measured by the fact that a regionally accredited institution is committed to the program (Murray, 2005). 1 TEAC' s assumption is that evidence in these three areas provides a sufficient basis for accreditation and the public assurance of the program' s quality.…”

Taking Stock in 2006

“…NCATE's accreditation process, for example, now requires institutions to provide "compelling evidence" (Williams, Mitchell, & Leibbrand, 2003, p. xiii) of teacher candidates' content knowledge and performance and to have in place data-driven assessment systems. The Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) requires "valid and reliable evidence" that would be credible to "disinterested experts" in support of the professional claims a faculty wishes to make about its teacher graduates (Murray, 2005). Teachers for a New Era, a major teacher education initiative funded primarily by the Carnegie Corporation, has three design principles, the first of which is "respect for evidence" (Fallon, in press).…”