FAMU’s College of Education receives good news
NCATE sends word of full accreditation
TALLAHASSEE – Florida A&M University has learned that its College of Education, one of the cornerstones of its 14 programs, has received full accreditation from the National Council for Accreditation of Teachers in Education (NCATE) and the State of Florida. It gives the university and nearly 100 educators who will graduate this weekend something to celebrate.
“What this means is that, through this process of verification, we can say that we have a quality program and quality graduates, with the evidence to show it,” said Dean Scott Jackson Dantley.
Interim FAMU President Castell Vaughn Bryant was pleased about the news.
“This is wonderful news for our university,” Bryant said. “What is means is that no one can question the quality of our program, which trains the educators who will train our young people all over the country.”
NCATE visits – which measure all teacher education programs against each other, not only HBCU programs -- are usually scheduled every seven years. Dantley further explained that this visit, however, was “a focused visit,” which addressed one of six standards. FAMU had passed all others in 2004, but was found to be non-compliant for Standard 2 (Unit Assessment Systems), one of the most difficult for its advanced programs.
“Under the leadership of Dr. [Castell] Bryant, a special team was formed to deal with the lingering NCATE issue,” Dantley said. “One of the first things that I had to do when I arrived in July was to set the priorities so that assessment would become a part of our regular operations, not just something to be addressed for accreditation purposes. It was important to ensure that we were using information from the assessment system to make informed decisions.”
It was only six months after Dantley arrived that the NCATE team was on the campus for the special accreditation visit. The three NCATE representatives and one State of Florida team member were on site to determine where FAMU was in three areas: being able to show how candidates learn; tracking their progress; and, making data-driven decisions.
“As the university prepares for reaffirmation of its SACS accreditation in 2008,” Dantley said, “this news is just excellent. What it tells SACS (the Southern Accreditation Council of Schools) that we have passed our own professional accreditation body – and we have the data to support it. This can only help us in the future because SACS is an evidence-based, data-driven body.”
Dantley said the news and implications could not be underestimated.
“If you look at our original mission, it was to train African-American people for the State of Florida. The College of Education is the heart of the institution; all of our lives have been touched by teachers. It is not all that we do, but educating teachers is very central to the important role we play.”
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 23, 2007
Contact: LaNedra Carroll
(850) 599-3413
