Alan R. Tom

Chopping NCATE Standards Down to Size.

In teacher education we have placed considerable faith in the ability of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) to improve the overall quality of teacher preparation. Even though NCATE program accreditation is not mandatory, colleges and universities preparing most of our elementary and secondary teachers have their programs accredited. NCATE assures us in its Standards for Accreditation of Teacher Education (1979) that these programs &dquo;meet national standards of quality&dquo; and that the graduates of these programs are &dquo;well-prepared school personnel&dquo; (Introduction). In addition, we were told (NCATE, 1980, p. 3) that the Standards are being &dquo;applied with increasing rigor.&dquo; Last year, for example, three in every 10 institutions presenting programs for review had at least one program denied accreditation, and one in every 10 institutions had all of its programs denied accreditation. If we listen only to NCATE, we must conclude that the quality of accredited teacher preparation programs is improving year-by-year. In reality, however, NCATE has never been on shakier ground than it is today. While the council apparently has resolved most of its internal power struggles, its current attempt to apply the Standards more rigorously will increasingly expose their flimsy nature. Elsewhere (Tom, 1980) I have pointed out that NCATE standards impose dozens of separate test conditions on each program, that these test conditions are vague, since key terms often lack operational definitions, and are grounded neither in a substantial research base nor in a conception of good teaching. With each turn of the