CSC to have teacher accreditation visitors

They will spend Saturday and Sunday reviewing a 100-page self-study report that has been prepared by the college’s teacher education personnel in an attempt to determine how well Chadron State has met NCATE's six program standards.

The visiting team with spend Monday and Tuesday meeting with faculty, students, teacher interns, graduates of the program, Panhandle school administrators and teachers who have hosted Chadron State seniors when they were student teachers.

The purpose of these visits is to gain an internal and external perspective of the quality of the teacher preparation program at Chadron State.

"This is a really important time for Chadron State and particularly for the teacher education program," said Dr. Don King, who as chairman of the CSC Education Department has coordinated the preparation efforts with Dr. Patti Blundell.

"A teacher education program must be accredited so its graduates can be certified to teach,” King said. ”We are confident that we have everything in order and that we'll come through the process looking good. A lot of time and effort has gone into writing and publishing the self-study report, collecting evidence to support our self-study claims and preparing for the team visit. This has been a team-effort from the start.”

King added that he and Blundell could never have completed this effort without the cooperation and support of their colleagues from across the campus. In particular, the efforts of faculty members in the Education Department and the Teacher Education Committee, which includes members from each academic area, have been valiant, he said.

In addition, King acknowledged the organizational efforts of Dr. Roger Wess, who established the vision and framework for the re-accreditation process before retiring from the Education Department in 2004.

Chadron State has been accredited by NCATE or its predecessor, the American Association of Teacher Colleges, continuously since 1929, the first year that the organization issued accreditations. NCATE was formed in 1954. The last teacher education program accreditation visit was in 1999.

The nature of accreditation has changed significantly in recent years, moving from an input evaluation model approach to a performance-driven, outcomes-based evaluation approach. This philosophical change has merit, according to King, but places more responsibility on institutions to develop comprehensive program assessment systems to better determine if they are living up to standards that have been established.

Although the NCATE accreditation process is an enormous effort, it has also been valuable and rewarding, King noted.

”The process has caused those involved to look at the programs from many perspectives with a somewhat critical eye. In so doing we have identified potential areas for program growth and improvement, but also validation for the quality of teachers we produce at Chadron State,” King said.