In the fall of 2005 a team from the NCATE board visited URI and reviewed reports about the School of Education’s high standards and performance in training future teachers. The board also interviewed university professors, alumni and students from the school.
“The accreditation process serves as an extensive form of self-analysis and demonstrates our commitment to providing excellent programs for future and practicing educators,” said David Byrd, professor and director of the School of Education since 2004.
The School of Education, which was originally accredited in 1982, also received the honor of being one of 11 schools nationwide to have its institutional report promoted on the NCATE website as an example of a “strong report.” Antoinette S. Mitchell, vice president of unit accreditation at NCATE, called the report “exemplary.”
Byrd was thrilled by that tribute, seeing it as a “recognition of our ability to consistently monitor the effectiveness of our program through the use of meaningful criteria, critical analysis of candidate performance and use of data for program improvement.”
The NCATE, formed in 1954, is considered to be the profession’s mechanism to establish high quality teacher preparation programs. It is an independent crediting body that currently accredits more than 700 institutions in its system.