NCATE and TEAC Form New Accrediting Body: The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP)

(WASHINGTON) The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) announced today that both are in the process of consolidating and are forming a new accrediting body: the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). The boards of both organizations voted late last week to approve the consolidation.

CAEP’s future goals and mission include raising the performance of candidates as practitioners in the nation’s P-12 schools, but also raising standards for the evidence which supports claims of quality. In so doing, NCATE and TEAC leaders believe they will raise the stature of the entire profession.

A fourteen member Joint Design Team, composed of equal numbers of NCATE and TEAC leaders, met frequently during the past two years to develop the proposal voted on by NCATE and TEAC boards. Key issues had to be resolved, including accreditation options, the system for reviewing individual programs, governance, and a new financial structure.

During a two-year transition period, the Joint Design Team will be augmented to function as the Interim CAEP Board. That board will be chaired by the President of TEAC, Frank B. Murray. The President of NCATE, James G. Cibulka, will become CAEP’s President and CEO. The Interim CAEP board will select the initial CAEP board when consolidation occurs. The Chair and President will remain in office.

“The accreditation system will encourage and assist all institutions and other entities that prepare educators, even those that already exceed that bar, to go beyond it towards excellence by continuously improving the effectiveness of their completers and programs to help P-12 students reach higher levels of achievement demanded by rigorous new student standards and a global marketplace,” says James G. Cibulka, NCATE president.

“The creation of CAEP is an opportunity for us to demonstrate the value which the new accrediting body will add to quality assurance, accountability and the overall performance of the profession,” says Frank B. Murray, TEAC president. “We have combined the best attributes of both the NCATE and the TEAC board structures to enable CAEP to be even more inclusive of the profession and other stakeholders,” continues Murray.

Both Cibulka and Murray say that “We wish to emphasize that we have not approached our task as merely unifying NCATE and TEAC with the least possible change to two accrediting systems that are already quite similar. Rather, we have set a much more ambitious goal: to create a model unified accreditation system.”

Following is the recommendation approved by the NCATE and TEAC boards to create CAEP:

That the Executive Board of NCATE and the Board of Directors of TEAC adopt a motion authorizing their Presidents to execute, on behalf of their respective organizations, agreements substantially…which would provide for (1) the creation of The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, Inc., (CAEP), (2) a transition period of no more than two years to complete the design work and implement its capacity to accredit all institutions and other entities that prepare teachers, administrators and other P-12 professional educators and (3) immediately afterwards, the consolidation of NCATE and TEAC into CAEP as the field’s accreditor.

Information on accreditation processes, governance, and other related information about CAEP can be found on the new CAEP website, as well as at www.ncate.org and www.teac.org.

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