ABSTRACT
Teacher educators with whom people have worked range from being skeptical to being keenly interested in using data to inform appraisals of the strengths and weaknesses of program candidates and to foster the improvement of educator preparation programs. State officials charged with the responsibility for approving and periodically reviewing educator preparation programs face their own set of challenges. Many states lack adequate staff capacity to carry out thorough periodic reviews of all preparation programs in the state, and consequently they may rely substantially on the periodic assessments by the national accreditor. A fortuitous set of circumstances put people in a position to address these and related challenges directly and systematically beginning several years ago. To be sure, the impact of preparation programs on some measures, such as candidate retention in the profession, seems more difficult to isolate. The development of a statewide, indicators-based preparation program improvement and accountability system is a long-term process.
