NCATE Offers Multiple Paths to Reaccreditation
As part of the first major overhaul of its system in nearly a decade, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education will give education schools a choice of two different pathways for seeking reaccreditation, officials for the group announced [last week].
Under the first option, schools must commit to working toward a higher level of performance on NCATE’s six standards. Alternatively, institutions can propose and undertake a major research project, or a partnership with a school district, to further the knowledge base on effective teacher preparation.
The changes will come concurrent with a reduction in the amount of paperwork and data schools must submit for review as part of reaccreditation.
“This is not a minor tinkering,” James G. Cibulka, the president of the group, said in a recent interview. “It is a major redesign to accomplish some ambitious, but essential, goals.”
The plans have already won applause from some high-profile figures in teacher education circles, including some critics.
The redesign “hits on a lot of the right issues,” said Arthur E. Levine, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, who released a 2006 report lambasting the quality of most education schools and recommending that NCATE be replaced with a new accreditation body.
“I also think it’s bold, to the extent that NCATE is a membership group and has a board of people who aren’t necessarily unhappy with what existed before,” Mr. Levine added.
The Washington-based group...accredits about half the nation’s schools of education.
“What happened before with the one-size-fits-all system is that it aimed at the middle,” [said Richard L. Schwab, the dean of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut]. “It didn’t really help anyone as much as it could have.”
The two pathways attempt to respond to those issues. Under the first pathway, a school can earn reaccreditation by engaging in a cycle of “continuous improvement.” ... Under the redesign, schools seeking reaccreditation would submit data over time showing how they are striving for the “target,” or highest level of performance, on the NCATE standards.
Moving to the target level on the clinical-fieldwork standard, for instance, would require programs to expand student-teaching to yearlong experiences and to integrate teacher-candidates into professional-learning communities in schools.
Under the second of the reaccreditation pathways, deemed the “transformation initiative,” institutions could propose and undertake a major research project or a partnership with a local school district to address the specific needs of that district.
The projects must be designed to build the field’s knowledge base of effective teacher-preparation practices, and will push especially the research institutions toward applying their expertise in local communities. They could work, for example, to try to address the problem of high rates of attrition in challenging urban environments.
NCATE will permit consortia of schools to apply for the transformation initiative to allow the schools to pool their resources and benefit from collective expertise.
The group is already piloting some model examples of the transformation initiative. ...In Tennessee, the state board of regents has proposed moving its education schools toward a teacher-residency system, in which candidates have yearlong clinical experiences in schools supplemented by coursework.
...All schools will also face fewer paperwork requirements. Data reporting will focus on outcomes, rather than on processes.
“[The redesign] takes out a lot of the bureaucratic baloney, and is going to hold us accountable for actually walking the walk,” said Mr. Schwab, the Connecticut dean. “That’s a big-change leap from the old days of NCATE when they’d count the number of books in the library and look at the syllabuses you taught.” ...
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