Credentialing Frameworks

In 1997, the U.S. Congress reauthorized P.L. 94-142 and titled it the “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” (IDEA, 1997). A major focus of IDEA concerned the assurance that all learners, as much as possible, would have access to the general curriculum. Concurrently, many state credentialing agencies, even while maintaining exceptionality-based and age-based credentials, were approving credentialing frameworks that included groups and of exceptionalities and levels of severity (e.g., mild/moderate, and severe/profound).

CEC PSPC responded to these emerging state multicategorical credentialing frameworks while maintaining rigorous validated standards by working in collaboration with the KSSC to develop two multicategorical Specialty Sets of knowledge and skills based on the exceptionality-specific Specialty Sets that had already been validated.

In the Spring of 1998, the CEC Delegate Assembly approved the development of these CEC Specialty Sets to address multicategorical credentialing frameworks. In late 1998, the CEC PSPC approved the CEC Curriculum Referenced Licensing and Program Accreditation Framework that used curriculum to delineate the two Specialty Sets of the framework: one for special education teachers of students with disabilities who are most likely to make progress in an individualized general curriculum and the other for special education teachers of students who are most likely to make progress in an individualized independence curriculum. This CEC Curriculum Referenced Licensing and Program Accreditation Framework retained the strengths of the exceptionality-referenced approach while providing clear guidance for credentialing bodies and preparation programs that had moved to multicategorical credentialing and preparation frameworks. It was also in consonance with the focus on access to the general curriculum delineated in IDEA 1997.

Performance-Based Standards and Program Reviews

In 1998 with the oversight of the PSPC, the KSSC validated Specialty Sets for three advanced special education specialties, i.e., Special Education Transition Specialists, Special Education Administrators, and Special Education Educational Diagnosticians. Likewise, in 1998 CEC added the Specialty Set for Special Education Paraeducators, validated in collaboration with the National Resource Center for Paraeducators. In 1998, the PSPC also added select validated items to the Initial Common Core for all beginning special educators focusing on the use of research-based practice. All of these were included in the 3rd edition What Every Special Educator Must Know: Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines (CEC,1998).

Additionally, in 1998 CEC began considering how to shift from a curriculum-based to an authentic performance outcome approach to program review. With the oversight of the PSPC, the KSSC edited the Specialty Set Knowledge and Skill items for initial special education preparation programs and for advanced special education preparation programs. The KSSC began by rigorously sorting all the Specialty Set knowledge and skills into the 10 categories of the InTASC standards. They next analyzed all the items in each of the categories and wrote a narrative standard that addressed the essential concepts of the Initial Specialty Sets. Once again, this provided credentialing bodies in the U.S. ,as well as relevant preparation programs, with a clear understanding of the knowledge and skills needed. By 2000, CEC had edited the Specialty Sets to improve clarity and reduce redundancy and validated additional multicultural knowledge and skills for the CEC Initial Common Core, as well as additional items in the areas of access to the general education curriculum, technology, and collaboration.

CEC approved these rich narrative statements, identified as the CEC Performance-Based Standards for the Approval of Special Education Teacher Preparation Programs in 2001 and they were included in the 5th Edition What Every Special Educator Must Know: Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines (CEC, 2003).

It was not until 2003 that NCATE adopted performance-based unit accreditation standards for itself and shifted its own review procedures from an input-based system of accreditation to unit reviews focused on candidate performance. However, in 2001 CEC requested and NCATE approved CEC performance-based standards procedures for program reviews.

The CEC Performance-Based Standards provided guidance to programs on the key components of their performance assessment systems. The Performance-Based Standards required programs to build performance assessment systems that were comprehensive, aligned to the standards, included multiple measures, and provided for planning program improvement.

In 2002, the CEC PSPC changed the Clinical Practice Standard in the performance-based program review process. The Clinical Practice Standard had been primarily based on a count of field-based practicum hours. In line with CECs commitment to the importance of clinical practice as an essential part of professional preparation, the new Field Experiences and Clinical Practice Standard required that preparation programs provide evidence for appropriate clinical experiences that were supervised by appropriate personnel to ensure that candidates are prepared for safe and effective practice. Rather than emphasizing numbers of hours, the new Field Experiences and Clinical Practice Standard focused on the kinds of relevant practica experiences provided, their sequence, and supervision by qualified personnel.

Also, in 2002 CEC formally expressed its expectation that preparation programs whether traditional or alternative should demonstrate their alignment with CEC Preparation Standards and their candidates’ mastery of the CEC Preparation Standards through submission to CEC performance-based review.

In 2003, CEC revised procedures for Specialty Set Validation Studies and initiated a process by which each knowledge and skill would have a documented literature, research, and/or practice base. These new procedures were included in the 5th edition of What Every Special Educator Must Know: Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines (CEC, 2003).

NCATE (now CAEP) was responsible for accrediting the overarching teacher education unit, e.g., College of Education, while CEC had the responsibility of nationally recognizing quality special education preparation programs within the unit. To provide a consistent performance-based review process for the NCATE Specialty Professional Associations (SPAs), in 2005 NCATE convened a working group of representatives from several SPAs and chaired by the CEC representative to the NCATE Board. This group, with a great deal of input and feedback from the field, determined that all SPA standards must be performance-based and must consist of no more than seven standards with no more than a total of 28 elements. The NCATE criteria were adopted by CAEP in the transition from NCATE to CAEP. By 2012, when CEC Professional Preparation Standards were due for review, CEC had once again realigned and revised its standards to meet the NCATE requirements.

The reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, titled the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2001) endorsed setting high standards and establishing measurable goals to improve individual outcomes in education. It required public schools to improve their quality of instruction by implementing "scientifically based research" practices in the classroom, parent involvement programs, and professional development activities for those students that are not encouraged or expected to attend college. This reauthorization reflected a national focus on performance-based outcomes and the use of evidence-based practices. During this period, CEC was likewise developing a program review process to incorporate the performance-based outcomes and to assure that evidence-based practice was addressed sufficiently.

Highly Qualified Teacher

In the reauthorization of IDEA (IDEA, 2004), United States policymakers attempted to align several points between IDEA and NCLB. One of the points of alignment was a requirement for what they referred to as “Highly Qualified Teachers” (HQT). The federal guidance for HQT in special education went so far as to permit individuals with no classroom or preparation to be counted as highly qualified by a state by simply being enrolled (emphasis added) in an alternative non-CEC approved preparation program. In essence a state could count an individual as a HQT without any preparation and without ever entering a classroom (emphasis added). At a time when fully prepared and qualified special educators were in critically short supply, the government was permitting schools to tell parents unqualified and unprepared special educators were “highly qualified.” In response, CEC’s PSPC developed and CEC’s policy section disseminated the CEC guidelines for highly qualified special educators and provided guidance to its members and to states.

Preparation Standards Refinements

By 2004, the PSPC conducted a special validation to strengthen required knowledge and skill for the use of evidenced-based research to the initial common core and the committee began validation of professional standards for advanced roles in special education. The PSPC developed the six Advanced Special Education Content Standards and the Advanced Common Core of knowledge and skills in 2006. In the same year, the PSPC reorganized the Advanced Specialty Sets for both Special Education Technology Specialist and Special Education Transition Specialist around the six Advanced Content Standards.

The CEC Board requested and the PSPC submitted its report on “Promoting Standards“ and began implementing a pilot of procedures to study and describe the evidence bases of professional practices in 2007. In addition, that year the CEC PSPC revalidated Initial Specialty Sets for Special Education Teachers of Individuals with Gifts and Talents and for Special Education Teachers of Individuals in Early Childhood Special Education and Advanced Specialties for Early Childhood and Early Intervention Specialist.

In 2009, CEC published the 6th edition of What Every Special Educator Must Know: Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines (CEC, 2009). This edition contained the program assessment system standards for the first time.

In late 2012, NCATE once again approved updated revisions of the CEC Initial and Advanced Preparation Standards for Special Educators. The revised Preparation Standards supported CEC’s continued leadership in performance-based approval of special education preparation programs. The CEC Professional Preparation Standards, including their documented evidence bases, adopted a structure of seven standards with twenty-eight major elements that brought its structure into alignment with all the professional association partners in NCATE. In 2015, CEC published these revisions in the 7th edition of What Every Special Educator Must Know: Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines (CEC, 2015).

In addition, by 2013 CEC had validated or revalidated Specialty Sets for a variety of advanced roles in special education that provided opportunities for career ladders in special education and encouraged practicing special education professionals to develop advanced areas of expertise and leadership. The Advanced Common Core Specialty Set was also revalidated. Concomitantly, a number of other new advanced role validation studies were in progress or in the planning stages. The PSPC also completed development of documented literature-bases for the respective Specialty Sets classified into 3 categories: research-based, emerging, and practice-based.

In 2013, CEC and The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) developed a set of professional preparation standards for teachers of individual with exceptional gifts and talents that met NCATE/CAEP criteria. Both NAGC and CEC agreed to retire the Gifted and Talented Specialty Set and permit NAGC to assume responsibility for reviewing GT programs for NCATE.

The 2020 CEC Preparation Standards

Immediately after the NCATE/CAEP approval of the 2012 CEC Professional Preparation Standards CEC began planning for revisions for the 2020 Standards. The CEC Board used a Professional Standards Workgroup (PSWG) to make recommendations for CEC’s ongoing work around professional standards over the next seven years. One outgrowth of the PSWG was the creation of another committee called the CEC Standards Framing Paper Workgroup (FPWG). The FPWG was charged with developing recommendations and guidelines for the process of updating CEC standards. Their recommendations were published in Shaping the Future of Special Education: Framing CEC’s Professional Preparation Standards (CEC, 2017). This Framing Paper established a plan for the development of the next sets of CEC Standards and included recommendations for the content of the standards, including the 2020 CEC Professional Preparation Standards should be influenced by:

• CEC’s High-Leverage Practices (McLeskey et al, 2017) and the CEC Division for Early Childhood (DEC) Recommended Practices (CEC Division for Early Childhood, 2014), and
• Once the new practice-based preparation standards were developed and in use, the Knowledge and Skill Sets should no longer be used to inform program reviews.

In 2015 after a 3-year dormant period the KSSC resumed work with the relevant CEC Divisions to ensure that the Specialty Sets were updated regularly following the Validation Study guidelines in the CEC Validation Study Resource Manual.

In 2017, CEC established a CEC Standards Development Work Group (SDWG) charged with developing the next set of CEC Standards, following the recommendations of the FPWG.

In 2018, the CEC Board of Directors approved requests by DEC and CASE to develop sets of professional preparation standards for individuals with exceptional early intervention needs and early childhood special education needs and Special Education Administration, respectively. By doing so, CEC shifted away from having a single set of initial standards and a single set of advanced standards to having multiple sets of standards for specific disciplines. Both DEC and CASE, began the process of developing standards, based on the recommendations of the Framing Paper.

The National Association for Gifted Children NAGC terminated its relationship with CAEP in 2018, and CEC resumed responsibility for review of gifted preparation programs.

In 2020, CEC approved three sets of new standards: The Initial Practice-Based Professional Preparation Standards for Special Educators (K-12); The Initial Practice-Based Professional Preparation Standards Early Interventionists/Early Childhood Special Educator (B-8) and: The Advanced Administrator of Special Education Professional Leadership Standards.

CEC Independent Program Accreditation

Since CEC began reviewing preparation programs with NCATE, it had also always offered an independent CEC program recognition option outside of the partnership with NCATE. Over the years, this option was very rarely used as most preparation programs chose a pathway to NCATE national accreditation and CEC program recognition. However, in 2020 the CEC Board approved for CEC to become an accrediting body on its own while also maintaining its partnership with CAEP. As of this writing, CEC is preparing the application to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.