TEAC - Audit scope

Teacher Education Accreditation Council

Responsibilities: program, TEAC, and auditors

Before the audit, TEAC staff, the auditors, and the program faculty should review the responsibilities of all involved, described directly below, and the details of the TEAC audit process described in this section. The program faculty and TEAC staff members share responsibilities for supporting the work of the auditors both before and during their visit, and the auditors have very specific responsibilities before, during, and after their time on site.

The program's responsibilities

Costs
In addition to the audit fee ($1,000 per Brief), the institution defrays the expenses (travel, meals, and lodging) incurred by auditors, pays the auditors’ fees ($1,500 per auditor; an honorarium of $100 per day for the on-site practitioner who is a member of the audit visit team and the cost of a substitute if the practitioner is a classroom teacher), and covers any other administrative or secretarial costs related to the auditors’ execution of their on-site responsibilities .

Logistical arrangements
The program faculty is responsible for the logistical aspects of the audit visit, outlined below. TEAC requests that the program designate an audit coordinator to communicate directly with TEAC and make all arrangements. The program’s audit coordinator will:

Arrange for lodging, meals, transportation; handle all expenses. Lodging must have convenient Internet/Ethernet access. Lodging must be as convenient to campus as possible. Lodging should not be lavish: it should be of the same standard used for visiting faculty or as program faculty are expected to use when traveling.

Arrange for a local practitioner in the area of the program (for example, classroom teacher, principal, or counselor) to be part of the visiting team. Insure there is no conflict of interest and put TEAC and the practitioner in contact. Arrange to cover the cost of a substitute if the practitioner is a classroom teacher.

Develop a schedule for the auditors and arrange for a working/meeting room so that the team can make the best use of its time on site; prepare a written schedule for the audit visit that includes times and locations for all activities, including time to work alone as a team and time for looking at facilities. (TEAC suggests that the program coordinator designate a conference room for the auditors to work in. The auditors should be able to review all documentation and meet with program and campus representatives here.)

Coordinate with state education representatives who are participating in the audit; arrange for lodging, transportation as appropriate.

Send any materials the auditors may request before the visit (for example, the auditors may request catalogs or brochures, copies of policies, documentation of state program approval).

Ensure that the program’s responses to any pre-audit tasks (questions about parts of the Brief that the auditors find unclear or ambiguous) are sent to TEAC before the audit visit.

Support the purpose of the audit. The purpose of the audit visit is to verify or corroborate what is in the Brief. The auditors’ time should be focused on this work. Every event in the visit is part of the audit. TEAC asks that the program make the most of the auditors’ time on campus: please do not schedule receptions or entertainment, provide gifts, or schedule social events.

Schedule all interviews and meetings in advance of the visit. The auditors will need to visit at least two classrooms; interview a sample of the senior administrators, including a group of chairs of other professional schools or departments; interview a sample of the program’s students; interview and consult with the program’s regular and adjunct faculty. Interviews should be held in the auditors’ designated conference room to minimize travel time around campus. Communicate the purpose of the audit to all involved; share the audit schedule with them and keep them abreast of any changes to the schedule.

Distribute to all specified parties a letter from TEAC’s president, soliciting comments about the program from all the parties with a stake in the program, as described in the letter.

Assemble all information, documentation, and other evidence necessary for the auditors. As a general rule, the auditors will need to be able to examine anything the program relied on the preparation of the Brief. Whatever the authors of the Brief had in hand and used to support a point in the Brief, whatever they quoted from, whatever they used to crosscheck or to corroborate a point, etc., should be available for the auditors to also check and verify. The auditors will need all documentation the program faculty used to develop and write the Brief : files, data, references, program and institution materials, and all documentation related to the internal audit. These should be available to the auditors in the auditors’ working room.

Arrange for administrative support such as access to telephones, a fax machine, computers, photocopiers, and secretarial services. Plan for someone to be available to the auditors during their visit.

If requested, provide materials to TEAC after the audit.

Respond to the audit report.

TEAC’s responsibilities

Communication
Throughout the audit process, TEAC staff facilitates communication between the program and the auditors.

Before the audit visit, TEAC staff does the following:

Schedule the audit; assign auditors; share auditors’ cv’s with the program for review.

Post the call for comment on TEAC’s Web site. Prepare and send a letter, soliciting comments, for the program to distribute.

Communicate with the audit coordinator to assure that all logistical arrangements have been made satisfactorily.

Communicate with the auditors to discuss logistical arrangements, the visit schedule, the ethical obligations of auditors, and other audit policies and concerns. Provide training to the program’s designated local practitioner in preparation for the on-site portion of the audit.

Prepare, with the auditors and the chair of the Accreditation Panel, the initial audit tasks, with reference to any matters in the Brief that seem of particular interest or show signs of being problematic.

Send any pre-audit tasks to the program for response.

Review the auditors’ s summary of the case and send it to the program for review and approval.

Communicate with the program’s audit coordinator about the schedule and details of the auditors’ time on site, pre-audit tasks, and any other audit policies or concerns.

After the audit, TEAC staff sends the audit report to the program for review.

Auditors’ responsibilities

TEAC auditors have five interrelated responsibilities:

Understand At the outset of the audit, the auditors must understand the local contexts about which the Brief is written. This understanding helps build a sense of rapport and confidence among the parties, thereby avoiding the tense and confrontational relationship that sometimes characterizes audits in other circumstances.

TEAC auditors base their judgments solely on the evidence and not on preconceived ideas or biases, no matter what their source. The auditors therefore make every effort to fully understand the contexts in which they are operating and to treat all persons they meet with respect and comity.

Verify The text of the Brief and the selected evidence are the targets of the audit.

The auditors verify the text of the Brief, and they do this by examining the referents of the text to be sure that the text is accurate with respect to language, data, and evidence. The auditors examine and probe the accuracy of the language of selected formal statements of the program’s goals, claims, rationale, and the program’s quality control system. These probes are meant to verify that the language is precise, trustworthy, and means exactly what it seems to say.

The auditors also verify evidence dealing with all elements of the accreditation system and their components, but principally with the evidence pertaining to the quality principles, the capacity components for program quality (reported in Appendix B of the Brief), and the internal audit report (reported in Appendix A of the Brief ).

Corroborate Sometimes the verification purposes of the audit lead the auditors to examine evidence that was not cited in the Brief but nevertheless has a direct bearing on their verification of the evidence and the precision of the language in the Brief. The auditors, in fact, sometimes seek evidence that was not in the Brief to corroborate, reinforce, or disconfirm the evidence that is in the Brief.

Judge The auditors come to a conclusion about whether any errors found in the Brief mean that the target was not in fact verified.

To do this, the auditors distinguish between errors in the Brief that are of no significance or consequence to the meaning of the text and errors that change the meaning of the text and make a difference in the verification of the target.

In addition to verifying the evidence in the Brief, the auditors also make a determination of whether the evidence is sufficient to support the claim that the institution is committed to the program.

Represent TEAC Auditors represent TEAC as an organization and as the embodiment of a new idea about specialized accreditation in higher education. As such, the TEAC auditors answer questions, grant interviews, and present TEAC positions in informal and formal occasions. They are sensitive to campus culture.

It is expected that during the visit to the campus, auditors may, at the discretion of the program faculty, meet with campus leaders to exchange greetings, to answer any questions about TEAC and the TEAC processes, and to corroborate evidence and argument found in the Brief. The training program that TEAC provides for auditors prepares them to answer questions that can be anticipated and gives them procedures for responding to questions that have not been anticipated and which challenge the auditors’ knowledge.

In all exchanges, it is important that the auditors acknowledge their own limited roles, and that the campus representatives respect the limits of the auditors’ roles. With the exception of the evidence about institutional commitment, auditors do not make evaluative decisions about accreditation, nor should they be asked to. Also, they are not on campus to suggest how programs might be improved, to commend the program, or to offer personal positions about accreditation issues in higher education.

What should the program faculty, staff, and students expect from TEAC auditors?

1. TEAC auditors maintain confidentiality during and after audits.

Auditors do not discuss or share their knowledge of programs or institutions, faculty, staff, and students except as required to fulfill their responsibilities to TEAC.

Auditors should not discuss at one institution the auditing experiences they underwent at another institution. There is a need to know criterion about shared information from site to site, and interpreting the need to know should be done as cautiously and conservatively as possible. (See principle 9, below.)

2. TEAC auditors commit fully to the process of the audit. The auditors are prepared to participate in all activities related to the audit (pre-audit, on-site and post-visit work). While on site, they maintain focus and are not distracted from the work at hand by making and receiving calls, faxes, and other messages. They arrange their personal and professional schedules accordingly.

3. TEAC auditors disclose any conflict of interest. Auditors should not audit programs at institutions where there is an appearance of a conflict of interest. For example:

•The auditor worked at the institution at some previous time
•The auditor applied for a position at the institution at some previous time
•The auditor was involved in a professional or personal conflict or collaboration with a member of the institution’s faculty at some previous time
•The auditor is a candidate or will soon be a candidate for a position at the institution.

None of these conditions will necessarily disqualify an auditor from serving as an auditor of a program at an institution. However, in these cases and other similar ones, the auditor alone cannot decide whether a conflict of interest exists. The decision must be made by TEAC and by the institution after consultation. Because TEAC staff will not be able to know if these or similar conditions exist, it is incumbent upon the auditor to bring them to the attention of TEAC staff.

4. TEAC auditors are sensitive to privacy issues. If faculty members or their faculty representatives show reluctance to share data that are requested, then TEAC auditors should be sensitive to their feelings and stop asking for them. If the data are central to the auditing process, the auditors will contact TEAC for direction in these matters. Privacy issues are very important to faculty and to TEAC, and care is needed to respect them and seek other ways to verify the evidence in the Brief.

5. TEAC auditors do not evaluate the program or offer judgments to the program faculty or institutional representatives. At no time should auditors characterize the data they are reviewing in terms of whether or not they provide support for the faculty claims (except data about institutional commitment). It is important that TEAC auditors stay in role on this question—speaking and reporting only to whether the evidence in the Brief is accurate and fairly represented.

6. TEAC auditors are not coaches or consultants. Auditors should not advance suggestions about how programs can be improved, how Briefs might be improved, or how the program’s chances for accreditation can be improved. Auditors are not to diagnose weaknesses in education programs, nor volunteer advice on these matters.

7.TEAC auditors characterize TEAC policies with great care. It is useful for auditors to always qualify their interpretations or cite the language in one of the TEAC publications that officially addresses the questions posed to them. In case of doubt, the inquirers should call the TEAC office for official interpretations of TEAC policies.

8.TEAC auditors maintain a professional distance between themselves and the program faculty. Every event during the visit is part of the audit. Auditors are constantly on the alert for information that corroborates or disconfirms the information in the Brief. They make the best use of their time and avoid any conflict of interest. Although sharing rides or meals with faculty and administrators during the audit sessions should be avoided if at all possible, meals are sometimes an efficient and effective way to convene a group; in such instances, the auditors should use the occasion to verify targets of interest. The issue is maintaining an optimum professional distance. Auditors should not be cold, aloof, or unfriendly.

9.TEAC auditors are discrete. Auditors share information and perceptions with discipline and care. Wherever auditors travel, whether to large cities or remote rural areas, they will find that the community represented by the institution is well represented in airports, restaurants, and public transportation. Although auditors might feel safe in off-campus sites to characterize, for example, an exchange with a faculty member, or to portray a data set advanced to support a claim, such activity is extremely unwise.

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