BYU–Hawaii’s School of Education has recently become accredited under the Teacher Education Accreditation Council Quality Principles through the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation Standards.
This means it succeeds in preparing competent, caring, and qualified professional educators. This is a significant milestone for the school, according to Dr. John Bailey, Chair of the School of Education.
He said, “The CAEP is the single legalized national accreditor for education preparation that administers TEAC accreditation. With their high and unique standards, this accreditation allows its program to train teachers and recommend them to get a license to teach in Hawaii.”
Underlining how this will benefit students, Bailey added, “This is like a foundation on which all our programs are built. And so, since our program is valid and recognized to be good, then it’s good for everything else.”
For international students, Bailey said once they meet the requirements of an accredited program and graduate from an accredited university in the United States, their home country’s government will accept the degree. This will ensure that students can be hired right away and start teaching. This applies to New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific and Asian countries.
Bailey continued, “We work with teachers from Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and many countries are now changing their laws to require teachers to have a license from somewhere. And when they hear our students are from an accredited university, it is an advantage for our students.”
Bailey highlighted U.S. students have much to gain from this news, too. “We have many U.S. students who don't come from Hawaii, and with this accreditation, they can take the Hawaii license to their home state and it will be accepted there. So we can now prepare teachers to teach in America,” said Bailey.
Graduating next semester, Carolyn Suliafu, a senior business education major from Tonga, is happy to learn her hard work in school will pay off. “I feel happy to know that the School of Education here in BYUH is eligible to qualify us to use our degree in many parts of the world. Knowing that, I am excited and happy that I can go home and I can be able to get a job and use the knowledge I’ve gained.”
Gabriela Herrera, a freshmen education major from Texas, said she thinks BYUH has a great program. “Since everyone comes from different places, we are able to share more experiences of teaching in other cultures. So I think its great that we got accredited because now BYUH can give us our prerequisites so we can go on and get our teacher’s license.”
As stated on their website, the accreditation process has multiple steps to verify faculty’s effectiveness and quality. Bailey said that the department had to write a booklet, gather evidence, use some statistical analysis and then send the report to their office. Then a team of four from the CAEP came to the school to see if it matched up to the report.
After addressing some issues, clarifying and fixing some things, they reviewed the case and approved the accreditation. The school is accredited for a period of 5 years, from Oct. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2020.