National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
Program Standards
For
Elementary Teacher
Preparation
Part I: Standards for Candidates
Preparing to Teach Elementary
Students
B. STANDARDS
Structure of the standards
In the pages below, each Committee standard begins with a number, or number/letter,
designation and is printed in bold face type. The text of these standards is taken
principally from language of the INTASC model standards, but (1) elaborates, in the
development standard, on INTASC, (2) provides additions, in the curriculum section,
emphasizing underlying concepts, structures and modes of inquiry for elementary
teaching subject knowledge, and (3) gives separate emphasis to families in the
professionalism standard. In framing the standards, the Committee made decisions about
the range of knowledge and abilities that candidates should master and also about the
structure of the Part I standards:
The curriculum portion of the standards is built around academic disciplines.
The Committee views core academic disciplines as enduring structures to
understand knowledge, as means of representing the content of knowledge,
and as ways to comprehend substantive issues. The Committee decided that
an alternative to organize curriculum standards around problems would not be
a useful move because problems change over time. Moreover, problems can
best be understood through the lenses provided by traditional disciplines.
The language of the standards is intentionally written in a common style.
Candidates are expected to "know," as a threshold, but also to "understand" in
a more comprehensive, thorough way that permits interpretation of the content
in each standard. Candidates must also be able to apply their knowledge and
understanding of content to teaching all elementary students so that those
students develop as knowledgeable, responsible, and caring individuals.
The standards are followed by supporting explanations that describe what
Drafting Committee members believe is important within each topic, with an
emphasis on what elementary students are expected to learn. These
paragraphs can guide both candidates and institutions as to NCATE's
expectations for the content dimension of candidate information in a
performance-based program review.
Finally, each section of the standards concludes with references to source
documents used by the Committee in preparing the Program Standards. The
first group of references, below, lists material pertinent to all topics covered
by the elementary teacher accreditation standards. For assistance to faculty
who are building and strengthening their elementary teacher programs, these
and other publications may be identified through the ACEI web site
(www.acei.org), as well as on the web sites for many of the
NCATE constituent organizations whose representatives participated in
writing the Program Standards.
Throughout these pages the Committee has chosen definitions for terms to convey
specific meanings. The phrases "all children," "elementary students" and "K-6 students"
are meant to be inclusive, comprising children of diverse ethnicity, race, language,
religion, socioeconomic status, gender, regional or geographic origin, and children with
exceptional learning needs. They are also intended to be inclusive of young adolescents
who are enrolled in upper elementary grades. The term "specialists" is interpreted
broadly by the Committee to include teaching specialists, special educators, teachers of
English as a second language, librarians, counselors and other school resource personnel.
To avoid confusion, students preparing to teach are referred to consistently as
"candidates" or "teacher candidates," while elementary pupils are referred to as students,
elementary students, or children.
Connections among the standards
The Committee urges that institutions prepare elementary teaching candidates to find and
make connections among the standards. The text in standard 2.i emphasizes such
connections within the curricular subject areas. The standards and explanations also
incorporate numerous references to instruction that are specific to curricular areas, as
well as references throughout to relationships among developmental knowledge and
instruction. In fact, there are overlapping and close relationships among all the standards
across development, curricular, instructional, assessment, and professionalism topics.
Readers will also find emphasis on these connections in Part III on qualities of
performance evidence.
Content Copyright 
2000 by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.
All rights reserved
Format and Programming Copyright 2000 by the Association for Childhood Education International.
All rights reserved
Return to Program Standards Index.