ABSTRACT
Since its founding in 1954 until the launch of its new standards in 2000, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education’s (NCATE’s) approach to accreditation was primarily compliance-based. As such, its focus was on inputs to teacher preparation programs, such as content of courses and faculty qualifications. The Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) was launched in 2000 as an alternative to NCATE’s compliance-based accreditation that responded to a set of externally established professional standards. Using an audit approach similar in structure to the Australian system of accreditation, TEAC accreditation sought to validate the claims that teacher education and leadership programs established for themselves as measure of quality in concert with TEAC’s three quality principles: evidence of candidate learning, faculty learning and inquiry, and institutional commitment and program capacity for quality. Meanwhile, beginning in 2000 with its new standards, NCATE’s focus shifted from inputs to outcomes with an emphasis on systems for data collection and analysis to drive improvements of institutional and teacher candidate performance.
