These standards were adopted by the NCATE Unit Accreditation Board on March 31, 2000, and were ratified by the NCATE Executive Board on May 11, 2000. These standards will be required for all visits, beginning in fall 2001.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK(S)
The conceptual framework(s) establishes the shared vision for a unit's efforts in preparing educators to work effectively in P-12 schools. It provides direction for programs, courses, teaching, candidate performance, scholarship, service, and unit accountability. The conceptual framework(s) is knowledge-based, articulated, shared, coherent, consistent with the unit and/or institutional mission, and continuously evaluated.
I. CANDIDATE PERFORMANCE
Standard 1. Candidate Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions
Candidates preparing to work in schools as teachers or other professional school personnel know and demonstrate the content, pedagogical, and professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all studens2 learn. Assessments indicate that candidates meet professional, state, and institutional3 standards.
Standard 2. Assessment System and Unit Evaluation
The unit has an assessment system that collects and analyzes data on the applicant qualifications, the candidate and graduate performance, and unit operations to evaluate and improve the unit and its programs.
II. UNIT CAPACITY
Standard 3. Field Experiences and Clinical Practice.
The unit and its school partners design, implement, and evaluate field experiences and clinical practice so that teacher candidates and other school personnel develop and demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn.
Standard 4. Diversity
The unit designs, implements, and evaluates curriculum and experiences for candidates to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn. These experiences include working with diverse higher education and school faculty, diverse candidates, and diverse students in P-12 schools.
Standard 5. Faculty Qualifications, Performance, and Development.
Faculty are qualified and model best professional practices in scholarship, service, and teaching, including the assessment of their own effectiveness as related to candidate performance; they also collaborate with colleagues in the disciplines and schools. The unit systematically evaluates faculty performance and facilitates professional development.
Standard 6. Unit Governance and Resources.
The unit has the leadership, authority, budget, personnel, facilities, and resources, including information technology resources, for the preparation of candidates to meet professional, state, and institutional standards.
' Candidates include persons preparing to teach, teachers who are continuing their professional development, and persons preparing for other professional roles in schools such as principals, school psychologists, and school library media specialists.
z "All students" includes students with exceptionalities and of different ethnic, racial, gender, language, religious, socioeconomic, and regional/geographic origins.
3 Institutional standards are reflected in the unit's conceptual framework and include candidate proficiencies.
The following pages provide the reader information about the meaning of the conceptual framework(s) and the six NCATE standards. Rubrics that accompany each standard address the critical elements of the standard and describe different levels of performance required to meet the standard. The rubrics are to be interpreted holistically; they are not to be used to make a separate judgement on each element of the standard. Most of the standards' elements in the rubric intentionally include a number of characteristics that comprise a specific level of accomplishment (i.e., unacceptable, acceptable, or target). A unit may address some of the characteristics within one level and others at a different level. The supporting explanations include a rationale for the standard and additional explanation of each standard's meaning.
Conceptual Framework(s)
A conceptual framework(s) establishes the shared vision for a unit's efforts in preparing educators to work in P-12 schools. It provides direction for programs, courses, teaching, candidate performance, scholarship, service, and unit accountability. The conceptual framework(s) is knowledge-based, articulated, shared, coherent, consistent with the unit and/or institutional mission, and continuously evaluated. The conceptual framework(s) provides the bases that describe the unit's intellectual philosophy, which distinguishes graduates of one institution from those of another.
Faculty members in the unit are expected to collaborate with members of their professional community in developing a conceptual framework (S)4 that establishes the vision for the unit and its programs. The conceptual framework(s) provides the basis for coherence among curriculum, instruction, field experiences, clinical practice, assessment, and evaluation. It makes explicit the professional commitments and dispositions that support it, including the commitment to acquire and use knowledge on behalf of P-12 students. It reflects the unit's commitment to diversity and the preparation of educators who help all students learn. It reflects the unit's commitment to the integration of technology to enhance candidate and student learning. The conceptual framework(s) also provides a context for aligning professional and state standards with candidate proficiencies expected by the unit and programs for the preparation of educators.
The conceptual framework(s) provides the following structural elements:
- the mission of the institution and unit
- the unit's philosophy, purposes, professional commitments, and dispositions
knowledge bases including theories, research, the wisdom of practice, and education policies performance expectations for candidates, aligning them with professional, state, and institutional standards the system by which candidate performance is regularly assessed.
Each unit seeking initial accreditation is required to submit its conceptual framework(s) as a precondition for establishing eligibility for NCATE accreditation. In addition, it will include an overview of the conceptual frameworks) in the preliminary section of the institutional report.
At its discretion, the unit may operate with a single framework for all programs or a different framework for each or some of its programs.
