Arlington, VA — Jim Kohlmoos, executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), will serve on the new Commission on Standards and Performance Reporting to help raise the bar for teacher preparation. The Commission was created by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), the new accrediting body formed through the unification of National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council.

The Commission’s goal is to will ensure increased accountability through a focus on outcome data and key program characteristic data. The board plans to use the recommendations of the NCATE 2010 Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for Improved Student Learning, which, among other recommendations, urged increased oversight and expectations for educator preparation. Kohlmoos was asked to work on the new group after serving on the earlier panel.

“We are at a transformative time in education, and nowhere is this more evident than in the discussion surrounding teacher preparation,” Kohlmoos said. “Education as a whole is becoming more like other professions in its increased reliance on evidence-based decisionmaking. It is absolutely critical that this discipline also applies to the recruitment and development of teacher candidates so our students are instructed by the best-prepared, most qualified educators possible.”

NASBE has been active in studying teacher preparation and instruction in recent years, with work that culminated in the 2011 study group report Gearing Up: Creating A Systemic Approach to Teacher Effectiveness, which called for greater rigor in teacher prep programs and state education policies. In addition, the report also recommended that state boards of education work closely with teacher prep providers and licensing authorities to ensure alignment among programs, certification standards, and evaluation criteria.

For more information about the Commission, see CAEP Updates at www.ncate.org, http://bit.ly/yz0f68, orhttp://bit.ly/ySApYP.

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, to become operational in 2013, will accredit over 900 teacher education institutions across the nation, producing approximately 175,000 graduates annually.