ABSTRACT
In this “era of high-stakes accountability” (Valli and Buese, 2007, p. 519), standards are ubiquitous at all levels of education. Teacher education programs at universities in the United States, including those for teachers of English to speakers of other languages (ESOL), are no exception. The professional organization Teachers to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) joined forces in 2001 with the National Council on the Accreditation for Teacher Education (NCATE; later merged with another accrediting body to form the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation [CAEP, 2014]) to create the standards for initial public school teacher certification (licensing) for ESOL. These standards (henceforth, “the Standards”) were most recently revised in 2010 (Teachers to Speakers of Other Languages, 2010) and, as of 2014, accredited 89 ESOL teacher education programs.
