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TEAC’s relationship
to states, other accreditors, and professional associations
States
The purposes of reviews for state program approval review and accreditation
differ: the former assures the eligibility of the program’s
graduates for the state’s license in the profession; the latter
assures the quality of the program. However, in practice the reviews
themselves are sufficiently similar that states and accreditors
can fruitfully cooperate in the process.
TEAC enters into agreements with states to coordinate
TEAC program accreditation and state program review. For the state,
the benefit of these agreements is that they allow TEAC to share
with the state valuable information that would otherwise be unavailable
to the state. For the program, the benefit is a marked reduction
in cost and effort. For the TEAC, the benefit is that accreditation
is more attractive to programs when it can be integrated with the
state’s program approval process.
Coordination has other benefits. Most states have
developed curriculum and performance-based standards for teacher
education. Naturally, the states wish to see that the programs seeking
TEAC accreditation meet those standards. For its part, TEAC requires
that the claims a program faculty makes in its Brief must be consistent
with the claims it makes elsewhere (for example, the program faculty
cannot make one set of claims for the purpose of TEAC accreditation
and another set for state program approval). Thus, TEAC expects
consistency between the program’s claims about Quality
Principle I (student learning) and the claims that the
program makes to the state and others: the program’s claims
about Quality Principle I must incorporate the state’s
standards within TEAC’s requirement that the program provide
evidence that its graduates have learned their teaching subject
matters, pedagogy, and caring teaching skills, along with the cross-cutting
themes of learning to learn, multicultural perspectives, and technology.
TEAC’s agreements and review protocols with
states take several forms, but most base accreditation and the state
program approval on a single document: the Brief. Agreements typically
have the following features, contingent on local needs and contexts:
- Mandated accreditation. A few states simply
require that all professional education programs in the state
be accredited by a nationally recognized accreditors, such as
TEAC or NCATE; in some cases, a state accreditation agency is
another option. The programs in these states have no option
other than meeting the accreditor’s standards. In some
states, TEAC and the state have added to the accreditation process
requirements that are of particular interest to the state. (TEAC’s
agreement with one state, for example, requires TEAC to verify
that there is evidence of mutual benefit to both the program
and the pubic school that hosts the clinical portions of the
program; TEAC otherwise has no requirements of this sort.) Although
TEAC also has no requirement that the all of the institution’s
education programs present themselves for accreditation (see
“What is a Program?”),
most states with which TEAC has an agreement require that all
of the institution’s education programs meet accreditation
standards.
- Reliance on TEAC for program approval. All
states require program approval if the graduates are to receive
a professional license. While only a few states actually require
that programs be accredited, most are supportive of accreditation
and freely encourage teacher education programs in the state
to undertake the self-examination required by accreditation.
Nearly all of the states find that the standards adopted by
NCATE and TEAC align with their own views of program quality.
Some states have chosen to rely on TEAC accreditation for the
program review function, and their agreements with TEAC reflect
that fact. TEAC’s agreements with these states are usually
similar to those with states that mandate accreditation, with
the exception that accreditation is voluntary.
- TEAC as consultant to the state’s program approval
process. In another kind of agreement, the state fully
retains its authority and independence in making the program
approval decision, but uses the contents of the program’s
Brief and TEAC’s audit report, staff analysis, or accreditation
report to corroborate and arrive at its own program approval
decision. In these cases, TEAC’s accreditation process
assists the state in its own program approval work and simplifies
that work as the documentation prepared for TEAC also serves
the state’s program review needs.
- Cooperation on joint site visits.
Yet another form of agreement between TEAC and a state involves
a simple understanding that to ease the burden on the program,
the state and TEAC will make every effort to both schedule the
TEAC audit and program review visit at the same time and use
common documentation.
Other
accreditors
To be eligible for TEAC accreditation, the institution that offers
the education program must itself have regional accreditation or
the equivalent.
Some professional education programs, whether housed
in the school or college of education or another unit of the institution,
may be accredited by other specialized discipline- or profession-based
accreditors (for example, music education, library science, and
counseling). TEAC accepts the accreditation of professional education
programs by other nationally recognized accreditors (that is, accreditors
recognized by the U. S. Department of Education, USDE, or the Council
for Higher Education Accreditation, CHEA).
This policy is of particular value to those institutions
that, under state regulation, must have all the institution’s
professional education programs accredited. The policy is based
on the fact that TEAC’s accreditation is rooted in valid evidence
that the program’s graduates have learned what was expected
of them. TEAC and all other accreditors recognized by USDE and CHEA
have standards about student learning and must give weight to evidence
of student learning in their accreditation decisions. It is on this
basis that TEAC accepts the decisions of others as equivalent to
its own for the purposes of fulfilling state requirements for initial
accreditation. An official notice and documentation that the program
was accredited will suffice for TEAC’s purposes in meeting
its obligations to the states.
The TEAC policy applies, however, only to the initial
Inquiry Brief or Inquiry Brief Proposal that a
program submits to TEAC; the initial Brief will not need to address
programs already accredited by another agency recognized by USDE
or CHEA. For continuing accreditation, TEAC will accept the accreditation
of other nationally recognized accreditors as meeting TEAC’s
capacity standards (element 4.0); but, for the purpose of satisfying
its quality principles and obligations to the states, TEAC will
require additional evidence of student learning from these other
accredited programs. The protocols for this shared evidence will
be negotiated with the other accreditors over the next few years
and can be expected to take one of the following two forms:
- If valid evidence of student learning is already part of the
self-study examination and the self-study report submitted to
the other accreditor, TEAC will accept the evidence in the report,
verify it during the audit visit, and evaluate it as TEAC would
any other body of evidence. No other submission to TEAC would
be needed.
- If, for some reason, evidence of student learning is not part
of the self-study requirements for the other accreditor, then
the program would have to provide evidence of student learning
to TEAC separately for verification and evaluation.
The purpose of the policy is to make as much use
as possible of the work the program has done for other specialized
or profession-based accreditors. In this way, TEAC can meet its
obligations to institutions that have elected TEAC for the purposes
of satisfying a state’s mandate that all programs that prepare
professionals for work in schools be accredited, and the program
does not have to duplicate its efforts.
Professional
organizations
Most of the national associations and societies that support the
professional activities of teachers have developed their own standards
for teacher preparation in their fields. Although there are some
important divergences, generally, these standards and those of the
states and accreditors align.
At the current time, TEAC relies, at its discretion,
on professional societies, organizations, and unrecognized accreditors
for assistance in the specification of the contents of TEAC’s
Quality Principle I, especially for those professional
educators whose roles are not covered by TEAC’s principles
for teacher and school leaders. Programs seeking TEAC accreditation
are free to adopt these standards and use them in TEAC accreditation.
In practice, that means that in presenting its
case for meeting Quality Principle I, the program faculty
must incorporate these standards in the evidence that the program’s
graduates have learned their subject matter, pedagogy, and caring
teaching skills along with the cross-cutting themes of learning
to learn, multicultural perspectives, and technology.
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