Accreditation not the destination for all schools

Barack Obama said during his 2008 campaign that he would "require all schools of education to be accredited."

The idea behind Obama's promise is that schools that educate future teachers would have to meet spelled-out standards. To accomplish this, the U.S. Education Department started a rulemaking process.

From what we found, the rulemaking process on this promise largely involved education standards for teachers.While the word "accreditation" was not used, it does "assess the performance of teacher preparation programs at higher education institutions in the State" as stated in this official notice.

When we last checked on this update, we rated it In the Works, because teacher education regulation was ongoing.

Now, in 2016, this regulation has been passed, and is expected to be implemented on the state level in the 2016-17 school year, as states will begin creating a reporting system for teachers. These reports will be likely implemented in the 2017-18 academic year.  

The regulations also call for transparency in teacher preparation programs and allowing states flexibility in what to report beyond the required standards.

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation commended the new regulations, saying the regulations reflected their own requirements for teachers. The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers criticized the regulations, however, as the teachers' report cards are tied to student performance on standardized testing.

We spoke to Elena Silva, director of PreK-12 education with New America Foundation, who told us that at this point accreditation is not mandatory, and there is not a federal standard for accreditation. Currently, the standards are set by CAEP—the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

Similar to Common Core, however, states can choose whether or not they want to follow CAEP's standards, according to Silva. Many states create their own accreditation regulations that often look similar to CAEP but are different. Silva also said that not all schools of education are accredited, as it is not federally required and there are so many accrediting bodies.

The last time we checked this, it was rated In the Works, because the teacher regulation rulemaking was in process. Not all schools of education are currently accredited, however. Because there is no evidence that it is going to become federally mandatory, this is unlikely to change in the near future. Obama said all schools of education would be required to be accredited. Because this is not the case, we rate this Promise Broken.