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UD’s teacher education programs ‘among finest in the nation’

4:45 p.m., Dec. 2, 2003--

Tim Barnekov, dean of the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy; Chris Clark, director of the School of Education; and Carol Vukelich, Hammonds Professor in Teacher Education and chair of the University Council on Teacher Education

The University’s professional education programs, which encompass more than 2,100 undergraduate and graduate students in five colleges, have successfully completed a comprehensive review by the pre-eminent national accrediting organization.

A review team from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) gave the University an outstanding evaluation after visiting the campus in late October, administrators who met with the team said. The seven educators who made up the team studied the overall organization of professional education and reviewed all the University’s programs that educate prospective teachers, administrators and school psychologists and determined how well they meet the council’s standards.

“The NCATE assessment confirms that the University of Delaware's teacher education programs are among the finest in the nation, meeting the highest standards of quality on all dimensions,” Provost Dan Rich said. “Only about one-third of the institutions offering professional education programs in the nation are NCATE accredited, and only about 20 NCATE-approved institutions have achieved an assessment as strong as the University of Delaware’s. All of the professional education faculty, staff and students should be very proud of this significant recognition of their accomplishments.”

The review team supplied UD with a copy of its report and met with various administrators to orally summarize its findings. The report and its recommendation to continue UD’s accreditation for the next seven years will become official in March, when NCATE’s Unit Accreditation Board meets to consider the review team’s recommendation.

“We were told by the chair of the team that he had participated in 18 NCATE reviews and had never seen such a positive report,” said Tim Barnekov, dean of the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy (CHEP), which includes the University’s greatest number of professional education programs. “The team cited no areas of our programs or unit as needing improvement, and indeed, there were no negatives reported at all.”

Chris Clark, director of the School of Education, said most of the credit for the successful review “goes to our outstanding faculty and to the hundreds of schoolteachers who serve as mentors to our students.”

“The faculty who teach future teachers are also doing award-winning research on teaching and school learning,” Clark said. “The connections they make between research and practice are direct and immediate.”

Barnekov praised the work done to prepare for the reaccreditation review. He said it was a cooperative effort among the various UD professional education programs and the University Council on Teacher Education, which is responsible for organizing, coordinating and unifying those programs. The council is chaired by Carol Vukelich, who also is Hammonds Professor in Teacher Education and director of CHEP’s Delaware Center for Teacher Education.

“Overall, it was a smooth visit, and the team was impressed by the high level of cooperation,” Frank Meyers, chair of the NCATE review team and dean emeritus at the University of Nevada at Reno, said recently. “The faculty, staff, students and administrators were very cooperative and exhibited enthusiasm for their programs. The faculty appeared to have confidence in the administration at all levels.”

Vukelich, who oversaw 18 months of preparation for the review, said the process required the University to compile extensive documentation of how its programs and the unit meet NCATE standards. For the previous NCATE review five years ago, she said, a large room in the Willard Hall Education Building was filled with boxes of files for team members to examine. On the most recent visit, the reviewers could access all the documents electronically, on the web or via CD-ROM.

NCATE evaluates the institution’s professional education unit in six broad areas: the knowledge and skills that prospective teachers have acquired; the way the students and the program itself are assessed; the quality of students’ field experience and clinical practice; the students’ exposure to diversity in their programs, including in field experiences, and how well the programs and the unit prepare prospective educators, administrators and school psychologists to educate all students they will encounter; the qualifications, performance and development of UD faculty; and how the University administers and provides resources for its professional education programs.

“The reviewers looked at all six standards in great detail,” Vukelich said. “They reviewed the materials we prepared for them and the supporting documentation, and they met with University students, faculty and administrators. They also talked to a lot of people in the community about our programs. It was a very comprehensive process.”

Barnekov said the reviewers particularly commended the University’s successful partnerships with the larger community, the quantity and quality of field experience in which prospective teachers participate and the effective collaboration among the various professional education programs at UD.

“When you have programs in five different colleges, there’s the potential for communication problems,” Barnekov said. “The review team was very impressed with the extent to which we work well across the boundaries of those different units.”

He said the team also singled out the variety of clinical experiences UD students have, doing hands-on work in schools as early as their freshman year and culminating with student teaching. In the elementary teacher education program, for example, the School of Education has implemented a “vertical field experience model,” in which elementary education students are mentored and supervised by the same student teaching coordinator in all their field experiences throughout their undergraduate years, Barnekov said.

NCATE has revised its guidelines somewhat in recent years to emphasize performance-based standards, Vukelich said. The change means the University now must demonstrate not only that its curriculum includes the appropriate content and instructional methods, but also that the UD students have learned that material. The University also must show that those prospective teachers, in turn, use the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired to help the youngsters in their classrooms learn.

“NCATE-accredited colleges of education are expected to ensure that teacher candidates know their subject and how to teach it effectively,” according to the council’s web site.

“With performance-based standards, we have to document that our students learned the material and that they are having a positive impact on their own students,” Vukelich said. The UD curriculum, for example, now requires student teachers to test their students before and after selected lessons to make sure that their instruction has translated into real learning by the youngsters.

Local educators who met with the NCATE team, either at their schools or at special sessions on campus, said they discussed their experiences with UD student teachers and graduates, as well as with the University’s partnerships with Delaware public schools.

“We are seeing quality teachers and quality student teachers come from the University of Delaware, and that’s what I told NCATE when they came here,” Todd Harvey, principal of Jennie Smith Elementary School in Newark, said. “They are prepared for the challenges of today’s schools.”

Harvey noted that, with so much pressure on schools to prove themselves in what he called “this age of accountability,” some administrators and teachers are reluctant to take on the additional responsibility of working with a student teacher. But, he said, UD always collaborates and communicates with the schools to ensure that the placement is appropriate and benefits the local school as well as the student teacher and the University.

“I think it’s to the University’s credit that the partnerships they have with the public schools are true partnerships,” Harvey said. “They’re constantly asking what our needs are and how they can help meet them, not just how we can help them.”

Robert Andrzejewski, superintendent of the Red Clay Consolidated School District in northern Delaware, who also was interviewed by the NCATE team, said he agreed with the assessment of the University as actively involved in many significant partnerships with local schools. UD students work in Red Clay schools, both in the classroom and in programs outside normal school hours, he said.

In addition, “Many of our teachers and administrators have participated in professional development opportunities staffed by University personnel but focused on needs that we have identified,” Andrzejewski said. “The teacher training program at the University is providing high-quality teachers for our schools. And, the University of Delaware Research and Development Center is providing valuable data analysis for principals and central office personnel to review.”

Robert Smith, superintendent of the Milford School District, said he came to Newark to tell the NCATE team about the Professional Development School, a partnership between his district and UD in which a group of teacher-education students take classes and do extensive hands-on classroom work for two years at a Milford school. Several students and graduates of the program, which now is in its fourth year, also met with the accreditation team, Smith said.

"We talked about the strength of the partnership, how successful the Professional Development School has been and how well-prepared the students are when they graduate and get jobs," Smith said. "Generally, I think the review team was impressed that this collaborative effort has done so much in a relatively short time."

NCATE reviewed UD professional education programs that include more than 1,600 undergraduates and more than 500 graduate students in all areas except those pursuing a Ph.D. in education. Reviewed programs are