High marks for elementary education program

CHEP's Elementary Teacher Education program has received top ratings from the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), the specialty organization of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. The council is approved by the U.S. Department of Education.

"We are delighted that the program has received national recognition from ACEI," Carol Vukelich, Hammonds Professor in Teacher Education and director of CHEP's Delaware Center for Teacher Education, says. "It is almost unheard of for a program to receive this rating the first time."

Nancy Brickhouse, associate director of the School of Education, assembled the 2,000-page report for the review. The UD program received approval for all 20 ACEI standards, which ranged from such specific disciplines as science and language skills to "adaption to diverse students." In all areas, the association's reviewers found no "weaknesses or concerns."

The report said: "The overall assessment plan was well done.... As most universities/colleges are beginning their assessment plans, the University of Delaware is probably ahead of most. Very well done."

The association reviewed UD's program in 1997, but new evaluation standards now are in place that go beyond examining courses and curriculum, Brickhouse says. Instead of just documenting what the elementary education program teaches undergraduates, the School of Education also had to document how well prospective teachers learned the material and how that translated into achievement for the children they taught.

How does the School accomplish that kind of documentation? Brickhouse says that all elementary education students conduct various projects during their student-teaching placement to measure what their students are learning. A project that all student teachers carry out, for example, assesses a sample of each child's writing before being taught a writing lesson and again after the lesson. Similar projects are conducted in other curriculum areas, as well.

Like ACEI, other specialty organizations also are implementing performance-based reviews, Brickhouse says. It's part of the national emphasis on standards in the U.S. education system.

"Because education is under such close scrutiny, teacher-education programs are also under that kind of scrutiny," she says. "We need to document that what we're teaching is important for our students and also for the students that they will be teaching."

The elementary program, as well as all other UD teacher education programs, will be reviewed this fall by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. That comprehensive review will examine graduate and undergraduate programs in all fields of education, including programs for school administrators and counselors.

"The state of Delaware also will be evaluating all our programs this year, so this is an important and busy time for us," Vukelich says.