standards (for moderate/severe) should be included. The CEC Standards Flowchart (Appendix 3) can be of assistance in determining the appropriate knowledge and skill sets.
Address the Entire Content Standard Most of the CEC standards are complex with multiple components. All of these components for each of the Standards should be included in the assessment plan. For example, CEC Standard 8: Assessment requires the teacher candidate to understand assessment (legalities, theory, and practice), conduct both formal and informal assessments, and monitor progress of students as part of the standard. Thus, the assessment system developed by your program needs to document mastery of the multiple components within the CEC Standard. CEC made this relatively easy for you by bolding key words in the descriptions of the standards.
Align Assessments with CEC Content Standards Providing an alignment matrix for the components of the assessment and the CEC standards will allow the reviewer to assess the relationship between the assessment and the standards more easily. This alignment can then be transferred to the scoring guide for documentation of mastery of the standards.
Develop scoring guides for each assessment Scoring guides must be sufficiently complete to allow the reviewer to understand what standards are being met by what component of an assessment. Aligning the CEC standards to your scoring guide again provides the reader with a quick analysis of the standards, criteria for mastery, and candidate performance. Many programs use rubrics for the majority of their scoring guides to facilitate consistency across grading and expectations of candidate performance.
Develop a Common Rubric Format If the faculty chooses to use rubrics, the rubric formats should be consistent across assessments with the rating scale, the format, and wording. Choose a rating scale and descriptors that all graders/raters are willing to use. Do you want a three-, four-, or five-point scale? What are rating descriptors, e.g., unacceptable, acceptable, target or not met, met, exceeds? The key is to use a consistent format, including the direction of your number scale (left to right or right to left), for all rubrics to ease comparison and program review.
Strategies for the Program Review Report Be consistent in your presentation of the assessments, scoring guides, and data. For each assessment, the report should provide the description of the assessment, alignment of CEC standards with the assessment, and findings/analysis of the data. Attachments for each assessment will be the directions to the candidate (actual assignment), scoring guide/rubric, and data. Following the same format and sequence for each assessment will allow for an accurate and efficient review.
Presenting Data The report must provide data to document that program candidates are meeting the standards, and/or that changes have been made to the program based upon performance data from the candidates. It is important to provide the data in aggregated format, for each semester or year that the class is taught, for different locations if applicable and for different program groups if possible. The “N� should be provided (number of candidates included), with the number and percentage of candidates per rubric title, or categories (unacceptable, acceptable, target). You could also report this as the number of candidates who earned the rating. The assessment items should be clearly documented, along with the semester and year the data was collected.
Findings As the faculty collects the data, they should analyze the data to identify areas for improvement in the program. The faculty also documents when no improvements are identified based on the data. This continuous improvement analysis must be described in Section V (Use of Assessment Results to Improve the Program) of the program report.
Connecting CEC Program Review and NCATE Unit Review NCATE Unit Standards and Accreditation NCATE accreditation is based on the unit conceptual framework and six standards. The unit’s conceptual framework describes the shared vision that guides efforts to prepare candidates to work in P-12 schools. It is the compass for making unit level decisions and the
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