History of NCATE in North Carolina
Recent Survey
Reasons for Continuation of NCATE Accreditation
Suggestions for Improvement
Strengths and Values of NCATE Accreditation

Accreditation of teacher education programs by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) was one of the recommendations of the 1987 report of the UNC Board of Governors, The Education of North Carolina's Teachers. The report contained 39 recommendations related to teacher education, many of which have been implemented and have guided the improvement of teacher preparation that the State has enjoyed in the recent years. Recommendation 19 required "that all approved programs achieve national accreditation ... under the recently revised and strengthened standards of NCATE...." The State Board of Education also adopted the recommendation, and as a result, private, as well as public, teacher education programs are required to achieve initial unit accreditation from the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). All constituent institutions in the University of North Carolina are required to maintain NCATE accreditation. By 1993, the fifteen UNC institutions that offer teacher education were visited by NCATE/NCDPI teams and granted initial accreditation.

Included in this report are two documents that provide additional background on previous studies of the NCATE and State Department of Public Instruction approval process. They are added as Appendix A and Appendix B.

A survey of the deans/directors of colleges/schools/departments of education in the University of North Carolina, completed in March 1998, asked these questions:

1. When were you last accredited by NCATE?
2. Has your institution ever been denied accreditation?
3. Has your institution ever received "provisional" accreditation by NCATE?
4. Do you, as head of the education unit at your institution, support the continuation of NCATE accreditation or would you prefer another accreditation body or process?
5. Are there any other general comments you would like to make about the NCATE accreditation process?

The deans/directors of the UNC teacher education preparation programs overwhelming support continuation of NCATE accreditation. Some comments were:
 

• I strongly support the continuation of NCATE. I feel that it is essential that accreditation/self-study activities occur on a regular basis to ensure the quality of programs. Given the accountability movement and tremendous attention to teacher preparation by the public and by legislative groups, I think it is vital that we be able to demonstrate currency with the field, adherence to standards, and regular programs improvement initiatives.
• I believe that NCATE accreditation is an absolute necessity if we are to make teacher education as strong as it should be. I believe that NCATE accreditation should be a prerequisite for preparing teachers, not only in NC, by anywhere in the country. I believe that institutions that object to NCATE accreditation as a requirement do so, in the vast majority of instances, because they don't want to dedicate the necessary energy, effort and resources to obtaining and maintaining accreditation. I believe that those who want to replace NCATE with another accrediting body are really in search of a set of accreditation standards that any institution can meet with little effort. I believe that the UNC Council of Teacher Education Deans should resist any efforts to take a step backwards in our struggle for better teacher education in North Carolina. NCATE is certainly not perfect, not but accrediting, legislative, judicial or executive body is.
• I strongly support the continuation of NCATE accreditation. I personally think that the collaboration with DPI and NCATE has served to strengthen the entire process of accreditation.
• The process seems to work well and relives the State Department of some responsibilities. I'm not aware of another organization that would look at the "unit".
• We support the continuation of NCATE accreditation as opposed to another accreditation body or process because we are familiar with the NCATE standards and process and have experience in conducting NCATE reviews.
• It is beneficial to an institution to have teacher educators form other states looking at a "unit." The NCATE process establishes consistency across states.
• Our interactions with NCATE have generally been very positive. The accreditation process is very time-consuming and expensive in terms of money and personnel time, though we do and will continue to support the process.
• Our chancellor, vice chancellor for academic affairs and I, as unit head, support being accredited by NCATE.
• I support a form of the accreditation process of teacher education which is national in scope.
• This institution supports the continuation of NCATE accreditation.
• Having a volunteer Board of Examiners visit a campus to evaluate standards that are supported by organizations that undergird the teaching profession and also best practices and research is truly the way to operate the accreditation process for schools of education.
• A key advantage of participating in the NCATE review process is that it causes us to take a critical look at our programs on an on-going basis according to a fairly consistence set of guidelines. While all of our programs routinely engage in evaluation and review activities, the NCATE review presents a more formal context for examining our programs, one which emphasizes the same parameters campus-wide.

Following are suggestions given by the deans/directors for improvement of the accreditation process:

• There needs to be further consolidation of the report mechanism, the content of the accreditation measure, and the process of complying with the accreditation criteria.
• A real disadvantage of participating in the NCATE process is that the review cycle is too short (i.e., just as one review is finished, it's time to start gearing up for the next.) Because preparation for a review can be somewhat costly and definitely time-consuming, we would like to see a longer turn-around time between visits.
• The major concern is the inconsistencies of the teams from one institution to another. (a) Some teams conduct continuing accreditation visits as outlined by the NCATE agency, while others conduct continuing visits as if they were initial visits. (b) The NCATE organization says there should be a sense of integrity and ethics in accepting and/or rejecting Board of Examiners members for the college/university's team. This has not always been followed and NCATE does not appear to monitor the issue.
• (a) NCATE accreditation is extremely time-consuming to implement from beginning to end; (b) the standards are sometimes presented as overly prescriptive and do not allow sufficient flexibility for teacher education programs operating in a much broader collegiate environment;  (c) it is extremely costly in terms of membership dues, production costs of the self-study, and man-hours associated with the self-study; and (d) it is often not coordinated with other accrediting efforts or reports both in terms of content, process, and timing.
• One general perception I have often encountered is that NCATE is overly "political" in its composition and operations.
• My problem with NCATE is that it likes "educationese" and the professional association upon which it relies for folio emphases are too enthralled with courses whereas I prefer the state's reliance upon competencies. I do believe, however, that NCATE has been working hard to improve.
• What I would recommend is examination of the joint NCDPI/NCATE process in terms of overlap and inconsistencies so that we are not having to complete two separate sets of materials and additional monetary support to the campuses to cover the costs incurred.
• The process is useful the first several times; however, it adds little after the first several times and it is a huge time and money sink. NCATE accreditation every 12-15 years would be sufficient. It sometimes gives you some short term leverage for resources needed in order to be re-accredited.
• The DPI process is a rigorous process and one that is taken very seriously since it examines every programs area. Having the NCATE team and the DPI team visit at the same time sometimes helps. On our last visit, the NCATE team commended our college on several things that seemed to carry over with the DPI team.

The consensus from the UNC deans/directors of education was support for NCATE accreditation and acknowledgment of the value of the accreditation process. These are the comments from the deans/directors:  

• The accreditation process as established by NCATE is a rigorous and worthwhile process; I support it strongly. The process provides a means for teacher education programs to meet national standards, to be reviewed by professional colleagues from outside the state, and the process insures that reviews will not be politicized as they too often are inside states. At a time when the state is calling for more rigorous standards, higher expectations, greater accountability, pulling away from a process and standards which are well established and viewed as exemplary by those of us in teacher ed makes no sense at all.
• NCATE is a dynamic accrediting agent. It continues to change its standards and is open to major input from the professional education bodies as well as organizations such as AACTE, INTASC, et al. NCATE is constantly adding new standards such as standards on technology and professional development school partnerships. Its newest standard changes are focusing on performance assessment. Over the next decade, I do not see other groups replacing NCATE.
• Some advantages of NCATE accreditation:
1. it is national in scope;
2. it provides standards for judging the quality of an institution's programs;
3. it promotes serious in-depth self-study, analysis, and review of one's own institution and programs; and
4. it provides a national measure of the quality of an institution's teacher education programs.
• The quality of the current standards as guidelines for good, solid preparation programs for professional educators, whether teachers, counselors, administrators, or school psychologists, and the expected even higher quality of the new revised standards that will speak even more clearly to candidate performance and student learning. Develop your own set of standards for preparation programs and I doubt that you will come up with much that is not already addressed with consistency and coherence in NCATE's standards for curriculum, candidates, faculty, governance, and resources.
• The external validity that NCATE gives us about our programs by enabling us to engage in third-party evaluations of what we do, involve outsiders, including members of the professional community, in those evaluations, and increase the credibility of what we do. This is the whole notion of standards that go beyond those we create, that involve the larger community, and that serve as benchmarks for us.
• The organizational health benefits that come from looking at what we do, modifying activities consistent with outside standards, engaging in continuous progress activities, . . . and using empirical data to stimulate organizational, programmatic, and personnel changes and revisions.
• The benefits that come with being open to peer review, public scrutiny, and provision of shared, open, and well articulated documentation about what we are doing to prepare future teachers and other professional educators.
• The leverage that comes with external standards, judgments, and perspectives on what we need to do or not do.
• And the great opportunity that NCATE documentation, visits, and reviews give us to celebrate all the good things that programs, students, and faculty are doing for education, schools, and children.

To: Joint Committee
From: Mary E. Wakeford/Ione L. Perry
Re: Improvement of the NCATE/SDPI Process

On April 3, 1992 the Joint Committee of the Board of Governors and the State Board of Education held a hearing on the NCATE/State process for program approval. The forty-six institutions that offer programs of teacher preparation were invited to address the Committee and submit written testimony. Representatives of 13 public and 16 independent institutions spoke at the hearing and/or submitted written remarks. Two representatives of the Association of Independent Colleges also spoke.

Speakers addressed the issue of the role of NCATE accreditation in the SBE program approval process, and their remarks are summarized in the minutes of the hearing. Speakers also addressed the need to improve the NCATE/State procedures for accreditation and approval. Their suggestions are summarized below for Committee consideration.

1. NCATE team chairs should receive special instruction in the nature of Option 1 and any special characteristics of the NCATE/North Carolina protocol. The role of the state liaison should be understood by all NCATE team chairs, and a cooperative, professional work style should be encouraged.
2. For continuing accreditation visits, SDPI and NCATE should work together before the visit and on-site sharing information, and otherwise avoiding duplication of effort.
3. Training for Board of Examiner team members should be improved to increase the consistency of interpretation and application of standards.
4. Each NCATE team should include at least one member who comes from an institution which resembles in size and organization the institution being visited.
5. Folio review by the NCATE-recognized professional societies should be made optional for all institutions of higher education. The SDPI specialty area review is considered an effective review of programs.
6. When the NCATE Unit Accreditation Board plans to reverse a Board of Examiners recommendation and the reversal will result in denial of accreditation, the institution should be afforded a response period prior to the final UAB decision, and public announcement of the decision.
7. Universities judge the technical assistance for program approval provided by the Department of Public Instruction to be very useful, and suggest that technical assistance be increased.
8. NCATE should act in a timely fashion on pre-conditions and NCATE's action should constitute an agreement.

National Accreditation for Teacher Education Programs

Background notes

NCATE Unit accreditation:

(the total professional education unit, not individual programs offered by the unit)

1. ensures that UNC programs meet national peer review standards,
2. ensures that UNC programs are reviewed by trained visitors, members of the NCATE Board of Examiners, from within North Carolina and from outside the state,
3. and is consistent with the practice of requiring accreditation of professional programs authorized in the University.

• The state Board has received numerous complaints predominantly from private colleges that NCATE was costly and duplicative of State procedures.
• Gov. Martin asked the State Board to review the NCATE requirement.
• There were procedural difficulties at 3 private campuses.

The majority of private colleges testified

1. that the cost of meeting the NCATE standards is too high,
2. that the process itself is costly and duplicative of the state program approval process, and
3. that the state program approval review process is adequate to guarantee high quality programs

UNC institutions in their testimony to the Joint Committee supported the NCATE unit accreditation requirement emphasizing that:

1. the process had allowed the campuses to effectuate changes in their programs that would have been difficult to achieve without the benchmarks provided by the NCATE standards and the impetus of accreditation review.
2. accreditation review had focused institutional attention on teacher education and brought together arts and sciences faculties and education faculty in the preparation of teachers.
3. there were procedural changes that they would recommend for the second cycle of the accreditation, including better training for Board of Examiners visitors about the context of teacher education in North Carolina, and the improvement of the rejoinder process (these were the same issues raised by private colleges).

4. the folio review of individuals programs by learned societies associated with NCATE (for example mathematics education is reviewed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, special education by the Council for Exceptional Children) was overly prescriptive, and uncoordinated and should not be required in the future. Individual institutions could choose to pursue this special form of recognition for any or all of their programs.

The SBE received the following resolution from the Joint Committee and on February 4, gave it preliminary approval and has sent it to hearings before final approval which could come as early as July 1993.

"The Joint Committee recommends that State Board of Education criteria for the approval of teacher education programs at institutions of higher education be modified to include the following:

1. SACS accreditation,
2. Unit approval by either the state program approval process or by NCATE accreditation,
3. State approval of Specialty Areas,
4. 70% rule,
5. 95% success rate of graduates in ICP,
6. Methods faculty certification."

---