By: Zachary Everett, Communications Associate
Six early adopters earned national accreditation through the 2013 CAEP Standards last October (2015). These educator preparation providers (EPPs) began the formal process for accreditation well before this decision. In fact, the 2013 CAEP Standards were only just being minted when they started. The benchmark was becoming more evident, but how they would achieve accreditation was, admittedly, less clear. Still, these early-adopter EPPs pressed on to earn CAEP accreditation.
We were in contact with most of these EPPs on a weekly, if not daily, basis. And their day-to-day experiences gave us invaluable insight: where are the stress points and bottlenecks? Where are the gaps in understanding the process? The work of these early adopters has benefitted future accreditation candidates; with obstacles identified, we were able to work on clearing them.
So what was this experience like? And how have these early-adopter EPPs benefitted CAEP accreditation? I reached out to several assistant deans who led these EPPs to successful CAEP accreditation to find out.
Patricia Heydet-Kirsch, Ed.D., (Florida Atlantic University) on the experience of being an early adopter
“We would definitely feel in a better position to meet CAEP accreditation today than when we did this work. I love the changes I’ve seen since our accreditation decision. I attended a site visitor training this summer and it was very encouraging to see many of the issues we’d experienced to become accredited have been worked out.The speed and frequency of the changes at CAEP, at the time, were a lot to keep up with. As early adopters, we did not get the warm fuzzy feeling of having someone help us through it. It was evident this process was new to the reviewers too; some of our questions at that point couldn’t be answered. But some of the things the offsite review team caught really helped us to avoid disaster later, during the onsite visit. They gave us really strong feedback, and three months to come up with a plan to address it.
It feels clearer now – the standards have been adopted, rubrics are available, guidance exists. If we were to do the process now, at three months out we would know exactly what’s expected in the rubric so we would have a sense of how to organize the visit so the evaluation team can find what they’re looking for.”
Michael Maher, Ph.D., (North Carolina State University) on the shift in data use and continuous improvement
“Each August, almost 100 faculty working on teacher preparation come together. Since approaching CAEP accreditation, these meetings have changed. It’s much easier to have conversations about continuous improvement when you can provide data, you can show them where you are, and where you want to go.Once we’d written the self-study report and were able to lay it out and build a case around high-quality teacher preparation – it came down to that central question: ‘Do you prepare good teachers? How do you know?’
We had nearly 300 pieces of evidence during our last NCATE visit; for the CAEP visit we had 33. You can do more with less if you use it the right way and it’s really good evidence.
Bringing things together to focus on improvement has allowed us to pinpoint particular pieces of performance data to bolster a case on why NCSU has an effective teacher preparation program and why students should choose us. Having a data-rich environment really helps – not just our programs, but as a land-grant university these data help quantify the economic benefit of the EPP.”
What was one unanticipated benefit from the accreditation process?
Dr. Maher:
“North Carolina is a value-added state; NCSU decided if they are to own the performance of their graduates three years out, we want more of a hand in their induction and to get data points on that.
We started the Beginning Teacher Institute. Teachers come back within their first three years of inservice teaching during the summer prior to the start of school for three days of workshops, plus follow-up during the academic year. It started as a program for NCSU alumni only and now is open to any first-year teacher in the state, serving over 100 attendees each summer and representing over a dozen universities and several counties.”
Dr. Heydet-Kirsch:
“One great outcome from the process came from our Selected Improvement Plan (SIP), which gave us the impetus to ask for funding and turn around a project at warp speed because we knew it was essential to earning accreditation. Rather than looking at demographics and ethnicity, we wanted to look at who our struggling students are and why. We developed a system that merges several databases and alerts us when indicators show candidates may be struggling.
The results of this project may change the way we advise. This project probably would not have moved for years if it weren’t so important for our accreditation and improvement plan.”
Words of Advice
“Begin your work very early,” urged Heydet-Kirsch. “Put together a team of very strong writers and faculty – the writing is time consuming. If you need to present a draft to different departments, do so way before it is due.”