Accreditation

Education Unit Accreditation

Over the past century, the accreditation movement has been strongly affected by a shift toward centralization and away from local control of teacher certification and licensure. In an age that values accountability and transparency, the process utilizes a voluntary peer-review system that is self-regulatory across the spectrum of the nation's many and varied institutions of higher education—private and public, rural and urban, large and small, secular and religious, historically Black colleges and universities, and open-access or selective institutions.

More than a decade ago, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, established with congressional support, recommended accreditation of all teacher education programs as a method of ensuring that all PreK–12 students are taught by caring, qualified, and competent teachers.

Neither the U.S. Department of Education nor the Council for Higher Education Accreditation directly accredits institutional programs. For educator preparation institutions, however, there are currently two recognized independent nongovernmental professional accrediting organizations in teacher education: the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC).

When the NCATE was founded in 1954, it became the agency responsible for educational unit accreditation, replacing the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) in that role. The five groups involved in the creation of NCATE were the AACTE, the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, the National Education Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the National School Boards Association. TEAC was founded in 1997 and formally approved as an accreditor in 2003. NCATE and TEAC are recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and by the U.S. Department of Education as the two major authorities regarding the quality of undergraduate and graduate academic programs offered at accredited institutions to prepare professional educators who will teach or provide leadership in schools. Additional accreditation and approval procedures are determined by individual states and regional accreditors. States approve education unit programs but may or may not require a certain type of accreditation (i.e., NCATE or TEAC).

Unlike some other professions with robust requirements and licensing systems, education has two approved accrediting agencies, yet not all of the top-ranked institutions that prepare educators are accredited by NCATE and TEAC. There may be a variety of reasons for some institutions to choose not to pursue accreditation (e.g., cost or because of philosophical differences regarding the accreditation process). Some stakeholders—including parents and community members interested in the preparation quality of educational professionals—may interpret this failure to require accreditation as a lack of agreement regarding what constitutes best practices in educational programming, which could result in confusion on the part of the public and policymakers about what constitutes a quality educational unit program.

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