The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education reaffirmed accreditation to the University’s College of Education, which was previously on probation, on April 1 after revisiting Nicholls in October of 2003. Obie Cleveland Hill, dean of the College of Education, said NCATE highly praised the University’s College of Education upon their return inspection and decided to use the college’s institutional report as one of two national models, available on the Internet at http://www.ncate.org/r esources/ncatereportnicholls.htm.

According to http://www.ncate .org, NCATE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

According to Hill, NCATE placed the College of Education on probation when NCATE determined that the College did not meet the organization’s new assessment standards created between 1999 and 2000 during its regulatory inspection in 2001, an inspection that usually occurs once every seven years.

“NCATE changes their standards slightly from time to time, but what we did in 1996 was dramatically different from what they required in 2000,” Hill said. “That’s why we had the little glitch in 2001 when we first went through.”

Howell said the element that the College of Education lacked was self-assessment. Howell said NCATE could not reaffirm the College’s accreditation status in 2001 though the program remained accredited and the organization revisited in 2003 for another inspection.

“Assessment has become a very, very big factor not only in colleges and universities but also in (elementary and secondary) schools,” Hill said. “You want to show evidence that your students can do what you say they can do.”

According to Hill, NCATE began to demand that universities prove that students are as knowledgeable and are as capable of performing as teachers as they are supposed. Hill said that although “paper-and-pencil tests” and grades remain important, other documentation is equally necessary to assess how well candidates might perform as teachers.

Howell said the University administration worked with people in institutional research, hired assessment coordinators and other people who were familiar with assessment and brought them together to work with those in the College of Education.

“We started to rely on things like portfolios,” Hill said. “We also started to rely on written reflection from employers, and we’re starting to get information from school boards, principals and superintendents so that we know how they rate the quality of the people we’re putting out there (to teach).”

Howell said continuing accreditation is extremely critical not only for the College of Education but also for the University. He said without national accreditation from NCATE, Nicholls would not be able to offer any teacher education programs.

“Accreditation is critical to the continuation as well as to the growth of any teacher education program in the country,” Howell said.

Howell and Hill said NCATE’s probation was positive for the College of Education in that it strengthened the relations between the faculty in the College as well as the understanding of the importance of NCATE’s new standards.

Howell said: “We had a concerted effort from all over (the University during the College of Education’s probationary period). It made all of them sit down and look at themselves; as a result of looking at yourself critically, you improve. It pulled the College together.”

Hill said: ” It’s going to strengthen our program in the sense that it is going to require us to do more things to make sure that if a person leaves this University and goes out to become a teacher that they will be better prepared to be a teacher, and if they are better prepared to be a teacher, chances are they will remain in the classroom.”

NCATE will return to Nicholls in the fall of 2008 and then, if standards are still being met, return to its usual seven-year inspection cycle.