Teacher-Training Schools Meeting NCATE-Set Assessment Standards

At Emporia State University in Kansas, candidates for teacher education are assessed at multiple points, from the time they are admitted to the program until they graduate. The assessments are analyzed to determine whether candidates are acquiring the requisite knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions to enter a classroom.

At Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., each program area issues an annual analysis of teacher-candidate performance, as well as plans to address weaknesses revealed by the data.

Those are but a few of the teacher-training programs highlighted in a report from the Washington-based National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education that investigates how institutions are complying with the performance-based assessment standards it instituted in 2001. The standards were revamped in part to address complaints that such institutions did an inadequate job...