Every five years, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education makes its way to NIU to evaluate standards of teacher preparation.

This year will be unique because the Illinois State Board of Education will come together with NCATE in a joint accreditation of NIU. Their scheduled visit is Oct. 13 — 17.

“This is an intensive compressed review,” said Margaret Bridge, university coordinator of teacher certification. “A team of 10 reviewers from across the nation including Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Indiana and Nevada will be auditing NIU to meet national and state standards.”

NIU has a total of 34 initial and advanced teacher certification programs that will be reviewed.

“Most programs prepared a folio for their National Association Review, which was submitted Aug. 2000 in preparation for this visit,” Bridge said.

As a part of the evaluation, reviewers will visit classes, talk to faculty and alumni, interview random students, review samples of students’ work, observe student teachers and talk to public administrators who employ NIU graduates.

“Through critical evaluation we learn how we are doing, and from that we become a better program,” said Norman Stahl, chair of the Department for Literacy.

NCATE is comprised of 33 specialty professional associations including public administrators, policymakers, teachers and teacher educators from across the country.

The ISBE and NCATE evaluation process has changed over the years. They are more interested in the outcomes of students if quality teachers are produced.

“Now they want us to prove to them that they’re top notch,” Stahl said.

NIU is one of 517 NCATE-accredited schools. According to NCATE’s official Web site, 82 percent of public schools favor teachers from nationally-accredited schools, and students from accredited schools pass assessment tests at a higher rate than non-accredited schools.

NIU demonstrates these qualifications of an accredited school. According to the NIU Title II Institutional Report, “Nearly 80 percent of elementary education students have jobs in their field or are attending graduate schools within a year after graduation.”

The report also showed that NIU students have a 99 percent assessment pass rate.

NIU has a conceptual framework as the foundation of its standards that teacher candidates and faculty follow. Within the framework circle, students obtain knowledge. Within that knowledge is content and pedagogy & the science of teaching. Students go into the community and practice their learned knowledge and then reflect on how to better themselves in

their teaching, thus increasing their ability to teach all children. On the outer circle, students and faculty must demonstrate collaboration, diversity, caring, life-long learning, scholarship and creative critical thinking.

“It clearly describes who we are and what we’re all about,” Bridge said.

Both faculty and students are key factors to NIU’s success.

“Faculty across the four colleges & education, liberal arts and sciences, health and human sciences and visual and performing arts & share the responsibility in preparing teachers, which is a unique governed structure at NIU,” Bridge said. “We have quality faculty and students. That’s what makes our program so successful.”

NIU was founded as a teacher education school and has continued to be an accredited school by NCATE since it was first founded in 1954. At the end of the review on Oct. 17, the ISBE and NCATE will report the review outcomes to the provost, which NIU will make public in its institutional report.

“This is a celebration where every five years we have the opportunity to showcase our exemplary programs,” Bridge said. “I’m confident we will do well.”