Coastal Carolina University's Spadoni College of Education has received re-accreditation by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), a professional organization that oversees teacher education.

NCATE currently accredits 623 institutions which produce two-thirds of the nation's new teacher graduates each year. Ninety-nine institutions are candidates or precandidates for accreditation.

"To have all of our graduate and undergraduate programs go through the rigorous NCATE assessment without receiving a single noted area for improvement was indeed a singular achievement," said Gilbert Hunt, dean of the College of Education. "Our individual programs are nationally recognized. I personally want to thank our outstanding students, our strong, hard-working faculty and staff, and our loyal community supporters for making this honor possible."

NCATE revises its standards every five years to incorporate best practice and research to ensure that the standards reflect a consensus about what is important in teacher preparation today. In the past decade, NCATE has moved from an accreditation system that focused on curriculum and what teacher candidates were offered, to a data-driven performance-based system dedicated to determining what candidates know and are able to do.

The new system expects teacher preparation institutions to provide compelling evidence of candidate knowledge and skill in the classroom. Teacher candidate qualifications are assessed upon entry, and candidate competence is assessed throughout the program as well as prior to student teaching/internship work, and before completion of the program.

A team from NCATE has a "full visit" at Coastal every seven years. The next visit is scheduled for 2010.

Approximately 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the College of Education, which has 36 full-time faculty members.