Teacher Preparation

Teacher-College Accreditor CAEP Names New President

By Stephen Sawchuk — October 13, 2015 1 min read
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The national accreditation body for teacher-preparation programs has decided to shed the “interim” label from its interim president, making Cristopher A. Koch’s position permanent, the organization annouced in a release today.

Koch, formerly the Illinois state superintendent, took the helm of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation in May after the organization’s board gave founding President James G. Cibulka the boot. The group has been searching for his replacement since.

At one point, Koch was in the running to head Kentucky’s schools, but withdrew his candidacy for that position. (Stephen Pruitt was ultimately selected for that job last month.)

Among other duties, Koch will soon face the challenge of getting CAEP truly off the ground. CAEP’s new, harder standards go into effect for all programs seeking its stamp of approval in 2016, and “legacy” visits for programs accredited by its two predecessors will end.

Sources tell me there’s been rather a lot of turmoil in CAEP over the last few months: some of it due to a slow roll-out of the standards, some of it to tensions going all the way back to the merger, and some of it from a teacher-preparation field that isn’t exactly thrilled about the new standards and their focus on college selectivity and performance. Koch will probably have his hands full.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Teacher Beat blog.