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| Vol. 17, No. 37 | July 23, 1998 |
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| Vol. 17, No. 37 | July 23, 1998 |
On July 1, Frank B. Murray, H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Education and Psychology, was appointed the first president of the newly formed Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC).
TEAC was created in 1997 by an alliance of organizations, education departments and educators in colleges and schools under the leadership of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), a group of 420 small liberal arts institutions, to "stimulate needed reform in teacher education accreditation," according to CIC president, Allen P. Splete.
"Frank Murray is widely respected and highly regarded as one of the nation's leaders in the field of higher education," Splete said. "His vision and expertise are unique. His desire to contribute to lasting reforms is impressive. He will be a strong leader in this vitally important enterprise."
Plaudits have come from other nationally known educational leaders as well.
According to Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, "The coming dialogue about quality and standards in teacher education, as well as the appropriate policy instruments for supporting such quality, will be instrumental in shaping the future of teacher education in America.... Frank Murray's superb balance of intellectual rigor and open, democratic manner provides an ideal style of leadership for these circumstances."
"Frank Murray is a proven leader.... He is known in the field of teacher education and beyond as a superb, practicing intellectual. He is a fine choice to head TEAC," said Donald M. Stewart, president of the College Board, and C. Peter Magrath, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, said "TEAC is needed, and Frank Murray will make it work."
Currently, the only organization offering accreditation for teacher education is the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Many colleges and universities have found NCATE's standards lacking and the process too costly or time-consuming, so this new accrediting organization was formed, Splete said.
Fewer than half of the nation's nearly 1,300 teacher education programs are nationally accredited, Murray said, adding that "teaching cannot reach its aspiration of being a genuine profession when the majority of teacher education institutions are not accredited."
"In the next decade, our nation will need to replace nearly all its teachers. Now is the time for schools of education to provide solid evidence that they are preparing caring, competent and qualified teachers," he said. "TEAC's mission is to put in place an accrediting system that will give us that evidence.
"When colleges and universities are required to back their claims with evidence, standards will rise and real problems can be clearly identified.
TEAC is inventing an educational audit process to help colleges of education to improve the way they train America's future teachers and to help assure the public that these future teachers are competent," Murray said.
"With a massive shortage of qualified teachers on the horizon, the nation needs all of its schools of education, and it needs to have them all accredited.
"Failing that, it needs to find new ones that can provide evidence that they can meet the nation's need for a new generation of professional educators. This is the task TEAC has set for itself," he said.
The academic audit program that is being developed is similar to an accountant's audit, according to Murray. TEAC will audit an institution's own quality control systems to determine if it is meeting its own declared standards. Sound institutional research evidence should be available to support a school's claims.
In other words, Murray said, "This is a question every institution should ask of itself: Is there any reason to believe we have actually accomplished what we think we've accomplished, how would we know and is there evidence strong enough to convince the skeptics?"
He added, "TEAC does not think that the problems of American education reside in the articulation of standards as much as they reside in the evidence we have about whether we have met the standards."
More than 20 colleges have expressed interest in a pilot testing program, funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), and six will be selected and announced in July.
A former dean of education and current director of the Center for Educational Leadership and Policy at UD, Murray has helped to establish and lead several national educational reform movements.
For eight years he chaired the board of directors of the Holmes Group, a consortium of research universities engaged in educational reform.
Since 1997, he has served as executive director of its successor, the Holmes Partnership, representing partnerships of universities, schools and national educational organizations.
He was cofounder and president of the Project 30 Alliance, aimed at the reform of the link between the arts and sciences and teacher education.
-Sue Swyers Moncure
