NACIQI Hearing Concerning the Recognition of TEAC
by the U.S. Department of Education
June 10, 2003
Statement by Richard Ekman
President
The Council of Independent Colleges
Good morning. My name is Richard Ekman. I am the president of the Council
of Independent Colleges (CIC), which is the national service organization
for the small and mid-sized private colleges and universities in the U.S.
The Council has 515 institutional members—which is almost all that
are eligible to be members. Many of CIC’s members—perhaps
two-thirds or more—offer programs in teacher preparation, at both
the bachelor’s and master’s degree levels.
For a number of years, many of our colleges and universities have reported
that the new teachers they prepare are frequently the ones most sought
after by the school districts that are hiring in the regions in which
the colleges are located. Despite the fragmentary nature of this evidence,
it does suggest that the approach to teacher preparation at these institutions
has been—and remains—highly successful.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, some small and mid-sized colleges and universities
became concerned that the existing accrediting body for their teacher
preparation programs was imposing requirements that would be difficult
for any small institution to fulfill, and it was also ignoring the distinctive
ways in which small colleges and universities prepare teachers. These
colleges and universities banded together, with the active support of
The Council of Independent Colleges, to create TEAC.
At present, 48 CIC member colleges and universities in all parts of
the U.S. are members of TEAC. Literally dozens more have indicated that
they plan to join as soon as TEAC is fully approved and open for business.
These include approximately equal numbers of master’s level and
bachelor’s level institutions and a representative sampling of church-related
universities and colleges, historically black colleges, women’s
colleges, both urban and rural institutions, and both universities that
are in the vanguard nationally in their uses of technology and those that
are more traditional. There is, in short, ample evidence that suggest
that TEAC’s approach can serve effectively the needs of the diverse
types of colleges and universities that prepare young people for careers
in K-12 teaching.
TEAC’s approach is appealing for several key reasons.
First, small and mid-sized private institutions, such as those in CIC,
are committed to providing a broad-based, general education in the liberal
arts for all students. TEAC similarly believes that every teacher should
receive a solid, general education.
Second, CIC colleges and universities typically require every student
to major in a rigorous discipline. TEAC also places emphasis on the new
teacher’s mastery of the content of the field that he or she is
teaching.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of teachers of science and
math. Small, private colleges produce disproportionate numbers of the
career scientists and K-12 science teachers in the U.S. These are fields
of urgent national need, and we need to encourage the colleges that are
doing so much to meet this need to continue and expand their efforts.
A third reason TEAC is attractive is that smaller, private institutions
are places where the teaching ethos is pervasive, faculty members take
seriously their role as classroom teachers and mentors, and promotion
and tenure decisions depend much more on demonstrated teaching effectiveness
than on publication records. Senior faculty members, not graduate students
or adjuncts, teach the students who aspire to become K-12 teachers. In
short, these institutions exemplify TEAC’s emphasis on ongoing,
continuous, quality assurance. Faculty members are models in their individual
professional behavior, of these very values.
Fourth, private colleges and universities are flexible and entrepreneurial,
and they pride themselves on being resourceful and frugal. These are the
same values that TEAC espouses and, in combination with an emphasis on
outcomes, rather than inputs or procedures, these are key attributes of
an institutional culture in which things actually get done.
In sum, if we hope to capitalize upon those institutional characteristics
that allow for superior achievement in preparing K-12 teachers, we should
give official recognition to the approach to accreditation of teacher
preparation programs that TEAC embodies.
Thank you.
Statement by Sandra B. Cohen
A ssociate Professor and Director of Teacher Education
Curry School of Education, University of Virginia
I intend to focus my address on the strengths of the TEAC
process, what the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education
learned from the process, and our experience working with two different
accreditation agencies. I appreciate this opportunity to present to you
this morning.
The University of Virginia offers a 5-year dual degree program leading
to a Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of Arts and Sciences and
a Master of Teaching Degree from the Curry School of Education as well
as licensure and endorsement from the Commonwealth of Virginia. In addition,
we offer a two-year postgraduate Master of Teaching Degree. Our program
is unique among the nation’s schools/colleges/departments of education
in that we were the first to be fully accredited by the Teacher Education
Accreditation Council (TEAC). Our TEAC accreditation covered elementary
education, special education, and all areas of secondary education. In
addition, we are the only institution with accreditation from both TEAC
and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).
Our most recent accreditation status from these two agencies was received
during the 1999-2000 academic year.
TEAC’s policy’s and procedures are comprehensive, logically
developed, practical to implement, and supportive of educational enhancement
and professional reform. TEAC’s strength lies in the recognition
that state licensing boards and large professional organizations set standards
for the professional development of teachers and that schools/colleges
of education are professionally and ethically obligated to meet these
standards. In fact, states in which teacher education program approval
procedures are in place, such as those in the Commonwealth of Virginia,
establish rigorous standards based on those set by the professional associations
in each licensure area. As an approved program of the Commonwealth, the
University of Virginia most meet these standards in order to have our
students licensed by the state agency. For instance, in my own professional
field of special education we have based our teacher preparation program
both on the state mandated competencies and the standards established
by the Council for Exceptional Children. I have presided over many meetings
in which faculty refer to their own professional organization standards
to guide our decisions. While holding firm to the importance of professional
standards and the insistence that evidence be given to the demonstration
of these standards, TEAC allows for each institution to determine it’s
own standards selection and implementation course.
Once accepted a set of standards it had to demonstrate how the standards
are achieved and the impact that the standards have on the school’s
graduates and the pupils they teach. All evidence of achievement must
be performance-based adhering to the rigors of a research agenda. The
result of TEAC’s intended flexibility within a prescribed structure
is that the teacher preparation program must dig deep within itself to
prove that it’s philosophy and implementation practices lead to
effective preparation of qualified teachers.
In the Curry School of Education’s case, we used an array of evidence
that included but was not limited to: a comparison of our students’
academic achievement with those of other UVA students in the College of
Arts and Sciences; a recognition of the research base underpinning our
most prominent education classes and experiences; and assessment on the
growth of our students skills across years in the program. Repeatedly,
we were able to demonstrate that our students were equal to or more competent
in content knowledge than none-education Arts and Sciences students enrolled
in the same A & S majors. We established conversations among faculty
that lead to a curriculum analysis and refinement process leading to a
greater focus on research validated pedagogy. Analysis of clinical practice
evaluations and development of numerous scatter-grams resulted in an understanding
of student characteristics that may result in clinical performance difficulties.
Although the Curry School of Education had been professionally accredited
by NCATE since 1960, we had never been forced to examine our own philosophy,
policies, or structures in such a meaningful way. In the past, such accreditation
was achieved through a collection of artifacts and a series of writing
tasks demonstrating that we fit the requirements. There was no real need
on the part of the Teacher Education Program to attempt a thorough institutional
self-analysis of practices, claims, and outcomes. TEAC, on the other hand,
forced us to look at our program in a way that drove us to understand
it’s very structure and to face our own shortcomings.
In putting together the TEAC required Quality Control System Chart (that
was submitted previously to the committee), we began to recognize that
the presumed structures may be in place but several were not functioning
as well as intended. For instance, the links and relationships among the
various Teacher Education related committees existed more on paper than
in real practice. Our ties to The College of Arts & Sciences were
minimal although the dual degree program had been in place for over a
decade. Our then developing student performance portfolio had little alignment
to the skill and knowledge areas we said the program was based on from
the beginning, and our follow-up of graduates added nothing to our curriculum
refinement. Recognition of these weaknesses was the start of our “Institutional
Learning”, as TEAC calls it, that has lead to some very clear and
direct changes in the past few years.
Today, The Curry School of Education has better and more consistent relations
with the College of Arts and Sciences lead by top level administrators
in both schools. The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences is leading
the way among his faculty in examining the liberal arts content needs
of an elementary education teacher. In addition, the two schools are currently
in the process of developing common faculty positions and roles to support
the needs of teacher education students in their joint degree program.
The Curry School of Education has also in the past two years developed
and piloted a new on-line evaluation and portfolio system that is fully
aligned and integrated with courses and experiences throughout the teacher
preparation program. We are now in a process of connecting with and learning
from our graduates in order to further refine our program offerings to
the realities of today’s classrooms.
The depth of our understanding of our impact on our students and graduates
is just beginning and much of this began with the infusion of practices
from the TEAC process. For an institution accreditation is a very hard
and intensive process that goes beyond actual program implementation and
forces the program to deal with issues concerning time, man-power, and
allocated expenses to assess the impact of the process on their practices.
What might be referred to as a “benefit analysis” is an equation
of costs against results in self-knowledge and programmatic change. The
TEAC process requires that the institution develop and consistently implement
policies and procedures that demonstrate program effectiveness relative
to the institution’s claims. The process is one that is relevant
and is a matter of documenting and clearly articulating what we as a teacher
preparation program are actually doing. Materials remain within context
and during the audit we were asked to produce the required documentation
only when it was needed for clarification and support of a statement or
claim in either the Inquiry Brief or on the Quality Control Chart. This
effectively reduced the man-hours for accreditation preparation and the
expense of reproducing, organizing and highlighting such documentation
as was needed in NCATE. TEAC relies on the objective review of 2 auditors
over 1.5 days (rather than a full team of NCATE and state participants
that can total 9-10 interacting with groups of faculty over a 4.5 day
period). Thereby reducing costs and management details further. The interesting
thing is that the audit was much more intense and meaningful than any
of the multiple sessions held during the NCATE visit. The audit probes
lead the Curry School to go deeper into our own self-analysis. This is
a significant difference for faculty who are committed to their responsibilities
of working directly with future teachers.
In addition, TEAC’s reliance on established standards as selected
by the Teacher Preparation program means that we did not have to create
volumes of folios for each professional association (which in the case
of the Curry School of Education would have meant 9 different documents
of 100-400 pages each) using different formats and abiding by different
interpretations of the NCATE policies. Again, time, money, and faculty
resources were reduced without any loss to program effectiveness or to
the accreditation process. Repeatedly, in a time of fiscal difficulties,
reduced faculty, and increasing numbers of students in our Teacher Preparation
Program, we realized the TEAC process focused on a direct audit procedure
resulted in an effective self-analysis, a relevant external review of
our claims, adherence to professional standards, and assistance in defining
our future direction.
In the future, the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education
will consider multiple factors in deciding about accreditation. Whatever
we do will be done with full recognition that TEAC served us well and
that our program has moved forward in a positive direction as a result
of having gone through the TEAC audit and review.
I will be glad to answer any questions related to the University of
Virginia’s participation in the TEAC process. Thank you for you
attention.
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