New Accreditor Gains Ground in Teacher Education.

The article explores how the Teacher Education Accrediting Council (TEAC) has withstood its older rival's, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), repeated attempts to beat it back. It asserts that TEAC championed an approach based on the idea of an "academic audit," raising the question of whether specialized accreditors should evaluate colleges by how well they conform to standards agreed to by the profession, like NCATE does, or if the organizations should allow colleges to set their own goals and require them to produce evidence that they are meeting them. According to the article, many educators feel the more important issue is not which agency is better but how to strengthen the many weaker colleges that have ignored accreditation altogether.