Could there be a glimmer of hope for education reform? In February ?04, the N.C. State Board of Education approved Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) as an alternative to National Council For Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accreditation. The decision came after the US Dept. of Education authorized TEAC to accredit teacher education programs, and the independent colleges in North Carolina requested this alternative. According to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, it seems TEAC is gaining ground among prestigious schools: Princeton, NYU, and the University of Virginia. This is happening despite the ?institutional muscle? behind NCATE. NCATE is a ?coalition of 33 groups, including teacher unions, content specialists and state officials.? The report calls it a David (TEAC), Goliath (NCATE) story.

The report emphasizes philosophical disagreement underlying these two distinct approaches. NCATE’s approach is predicated on the notion that teaching should be “professionalized,” that is, grounded in uniform standards that all programs and teachers in a given specialty should meet. Hence the much-touted standards of the more than twenty NCATE-affiliated “specialty professional associations” such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Council of Teachers of English. However, TEAC President Frank Murray is right on target on two points regarding NCATE’s standards: first, NCATE has been so influential that many states have by and large already adopted their professional specialty standards as their own–ironically rendering NCATE’s seal of approval somewhat redundant; and second, that in any event those standards are so “vague as to be unhelpful.” 

Many in the NCATE establishment are worried TEAC will “allow weak schools to be accredited without having met reasonable standards.”  The problem is NCATE is losing customers and control! These concerns have little to do with standards.