U.S. Department of Education
( USDE)
and USDE recognition: The U.S. Department of Education
(USDE) is required by law to publish a list of nationally recognized
accrediting agencies that the Secretary of Education determines
to be reliable authorities as to the quality of education or training
provided by the institutions of higher education and the higher
education programs they accredit. TEAC was recognized by USDE in
September 2003.
Valid assessment of
learning: The Inquiry Brief conveys to TEAC and
to the field how faculty has substantiated the aims it has made
about the candidates. In a quantitative design, an assessment is
valid to the extent that the credibility of rival explanations for
the findings is low and the likelihood that the program itself is
responsible for the findings is high.
A key to any analysis of an assessment is the validity
of the interpretations made of the data. In a qualitative design,
validity is a function of triangulation where multiple sources of
data suggest converging interpretations of the extent to which the
faculty claims are substantiated.
Validity of interpretations of data: In modern
psychometric views, validity is not a property of a data set. Instead,
validity refers to the propriety of the interpretations that are
made concerning the findings of a measurement effort.
For example, if SAT scores are taken to measure
teacher competence, and the scores are interpreted in that fashion,
faculty would need to present an argument including related findings
and research to substantiate the credibility of this claim. If college
grade point averages are taken as measures of pedagogical content
knowledge, again, the interpretation would need to be defended by
some sort of analysis of the procedures used to assign course grades.
And if measures of the Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory are
taken as measures of teachers’ caring, the faculty would need
to present arguments to make such a claim seem credible.
Verified
target: A target, whether an element, component, subcomponent,
or item of text, is said to be verified when at least 75 percent
of the probes assigned to it are confirmed, or when, in the case
of text, there is a clear, unambiguous confirmation by a probe.
TEAC also speaks of targets that are verified as being confirmed.
Weakness:
When the evidence for a claim about part of the TEAC system is weak,
but the evidence is still sufficient to support the claim for the
component or element, the Accreditation Panel notes this by citing
a weakness that must be subsequently addressed by the accredited
program in its annual reports to TEAC.
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