Accreditation and Certification Standards

Authority for teacher licensure and certification by specialty areas rests ultimately with the 50 separate states. State education agencies, variously constituted and designated by legislative action, bear statutory responsibility for defining minimal requirements for entry into teaching. Directly or indirectly, virtually all state regulations go further in establishing basic criteria or standards to which teachers’ preparatory programs must conform.1 Requirements are apt to vary considerably from state to state, differing from one another both in terms of how they are organized and according to their specific provisions.2