By Tom

Regular readers to our blog may have noticed that I frequently mention NCATE. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education is responsible for holding colleges of education to high standards. And that’s important. No one wants their child spending six hours a day with someone who didn’t go through a decent teacher education program.

 

So how does it work? How does NCATE go about checking out teacher schools to see if they’re any good?

 

Funny you should ask. I happen to have just returned from a Board of Examiners (BOE) visit. Sworn to secrecy, I can’t tell you where I went and I can’t even tell you how well the college did. But I think I can at least tell you what we did. And by “we” I mean me and the rest of the BOE team. There were six of us from all over the country.

 

We had all gone through a week-long training and none of us knew each other. BOE members typically visit two universities each year. Most members are affiliated with higher education, but they always try to have at least one public school teacher. I guess we keep them grounded. We find out where we’re going about four months ahead of time, each of us hoping for those four magic words to come through the email: University of Puerto Rico.  Until that happens, though, we obediently go where we’re sent and perform a somewhat thankless service for the good of the order.

 

So here’s the anatomy of my latest NCATE visit. It started on Saturday. Early Saturday. I’m talking 12:40 AM, Saturday morning. That’s when my first flight took off. Three hours on that plane, a one-hour layover, another ninety-minute flight, and then a one hour wait for a three-hour shuttle ride to the off-campus Holiday Inn. When you add in the two-hour time change, you got yourself a twelve-hour journey, which means I was just in time for our 1:00 team meeting, the one where everyone introduces themselves and tries to make a great first impression.

 

I found out later that I failed miserably. We learned about each other and shared our impressions of the Institutional Report and on-line artifacts. You see, long before we get to the campus, the school completes a report explaining how they’ve met the six NCATE standards. They also gather evidence and post it on line. They send each of us a link to their report, which in turn has links to the evidence. We have to read it ahead of time and record our initial impressions. We’re also told in advance which standard we’ll be writing about. Mine was standard 2; the assessment system.

 

During our training they told us that if you really apply yourself you can get most of the work done way ahead of time so that you can spend most of your on-campus time just fact-checking.

 

And I’m sure that’s probably true.

 

After our meeting, which was in the hotel workroom, we walked across the street to the campus and found the on-campus workroom, which had slightly better snacks and twice as many office supplies as the off-campus hotel workroom. There were also paper artifacts that couldn’t be placed on-line; things like posters and student portfolios. We examined those for awhile, and then they led us to another room, where the dean made his welcoming presentation.

 

That’s when the trip really caught up with me. It’s one thing to nod off for a word or two; we’ve all done that. It’s another thing to miss entire paragraphs, or to wake with a jerk to find that the speaker is off on a completely different topic. When that finally ended, we went to the Poster Session. That’s where shiny students and happy faculty show posters that explain all the special programs that the school offers. It was actually quite informative and it was nice to put faces to all the things we’d been reading about. Then it was back to the hotel and then off to The Best Restaurant in Town.

 

Which was great, except that I ended up next to the dean. I got to spend the first half of my dinner apologizing for dozing off during his talk, and the second half listening to random facts about the local geography. When we got back to the hotel, I slept like a log.

 

No one else did, though, because half the hotel was occupied by fans of an opposing basketball team. Most of them were undergraduates, and all of them were drunk. Apparently there was a lot of noise.

 

Sunday. We were left pretty much alone, and spent the day looking at documents in the workroom, discussing what we saw and figuring out which questions we needed to ask. Dinner was at The Second-Best Restaurant in Town. When we got back to the hotel, we looked at Monday’s interview schedule and figured out who was going where.

 

Monday. Monday is always the most hectic day on an NCATE visit. It’s the day when you hustle from interview to interview, asking questions, taking notes, writing more questions, asking them and taking more notes. Here’s what my day looked like:

8:15: Meeting with the Unit Assessment Committee.

9:15: Meeting with the Academic Affairs Committee.

10:15; Meeting with the Professional Development School Coordinators and Clinical Instructors.

11:15: Meeting with representatives from the Center for Student and Professional Services.

12:00: Lunch. (Thank you, Quiznos!)

1:15: Meeting with some of the undergraduate faculty.

2:15: Meeting with the Student Affairs Committee.

3:15: Meeting with the Program Coordinating Committee.

4:15: Meeting with some of the current student teachers and several recent graduates.

 

It was a pretty full day, and we briefly relaxed at The Third-Best Restaurant in Town. Back at the hotel, we met to discuss our findings, and then it was back to our rooms to get some work done on our reports.

 

Tuesday. Tuesdays can go either way on an NCATE visit. If Monday leaves the team with a lot of unanswered questions or conflicting answers, Tuesday is the day when the school has to scramble to sort things out. That can get a little tense. They’ve typically been working for the past two years getting ready for their visit, and by now they assume they’ve thought of everything. Sometimes they haven’t. On the other hand, if Monday went well, Tuesday will go even better.

 

Our Tuesday was pretty relaxed. I was picked up at the hotel and spent the morning visiting local schools to see some of the student teachers. It was neat to see little kids again, and watch well-trained interns in action. I was impressed. Then it was back to campus for another boxed lunch. Tuesday afternoon was left open so that we could work on our reports. I had mine written by 6:00, in time for dinner at the hotel restaurant. I don’t think it was the fourth-best in town, but I could be wrong.

 

After dinner we went through each standard, item by item, and voted on whether or not the school met standard. Then we proofread each other’s reports and posted them onto the NCATE website. Our task completed, we celebrated at the bar.

 

Wednesday. The day of reckoning. The day when the team chairperson presents our decision to the college. Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Our decision is really only a recommendation to the Unit Accreditation Board. They’re the guys that make the final call, but they rarely overturn a BOE recommendation. Of course, my Wednesday entailed reversing the twelve-hour journey that I went through on Saturday.

 

So there you have it. Our profession’s way of ensuring high standards at the pre-service level. I see NCATE as an essential part of our educational system. If we’re going to hold students to high standards, we need to hold teachers to high standards. And if we’re going to do that, then we have to hold the colleges that produce those teachers to high standards. NCATE has very high standards. It is not easy for a college to meet those standards. I’ve been on visits where they have and visits where they haven’t. But either way, I go home exhausted and proud of the fact that there’s an institution in this country that’s checking up on teacher education.

 

I also come home somewhat disappointed. States have the option of requiring that schools of education meet NCATE standards. Washington is one of the states that doesn’t. That’s not to say that Washington doesn't hold it’s institutions to high standards. The Professional Educators Standards Board, along with OSPI has a similar process for Washington chools. And those schools that aspire to NCATE accreditation usually have joint state/NCATE visits. But they don’t all have to, and I wish that would change. I think teacher education is one area in which we need national standards and the objective judgment of people from out of state.