Adopted March 2008

Overview

An experimental program can be developed and submitted at any time in the seven year accreditation cycle. Once approved, the program will be incorporated into the institution’s or program sponsor’s accreditation cohort activities. Experimental programs are based on an institution’s interest in learning whether an issue, question, or problem could be addressed more effectively through a unique preparation program that may or may not align with the Commission’s adopted program standards. Once that issue is clearly defined, the institution will submit a 3-5 page paper describing the issue, question, or problem to the Commission. Staff will review the proposal brief and present the brief in an agenda item before the Committee on Accreditation. If the COA wants a full proposal, staff will provide technical assistance to the institution in developing the full program proposal. Developing the full proposal requires responding to the Preconditions, updating the Common Standards, and responding to the Experimental Program Standards. The proposed experimental program must satisfy the ten preconditions that apply to every educator preparation program. The proposed program must also satisfy preconditions associated with the particular authorization to be granted through the program unless the proposal requests a waiver of a particular precondition with a justification describing how the intent of the precondition will be met. The full program proposal will be reviewed by a panel of Board of Institutional Reviewers. Reviewers may ask for additional information if the proposal does not initially meet the Experimental Program Standards. Once the reviewers indicate that the program meets the standards, staff will develop an agenda item with a recommendation that the COA approve the program.

Responding to the Experimental Program Standards

The proposal integrates two documents; a proposal for a research program and a proposal for a professional preparation program. Program sponsors must submit a complete program proposal for the experimental program. The proposal must also describe a research project with a clearly articulated rationale based on relevant and recent scholarly and research literature. The proposed program must be organized to address specific research questions or to address particular hypotheses or objectives and must document the activities and coursework candidates will complete to develop the desired competencies. The proposal must identify candidate competencies and describe indicators that will be used to measure those competencies.

Program proposals should provide sufficient information about how the program addresses each standard so that a knowledgeable team of professionals can determine whether each standard has been met by the program. The goal in writing the response to any standard should be to describe the proposed program clearly enough for an outside reader to understand what a prospective educator will experience as he or she progresses through the program in terms of depth, breadth, and sequencing of instructional and field experiences, and what he or she will know and be able to do and demonstrate at the end of the program. Review teams will then be able to assess the responses for consistency with the standard, completeness of the response, and quality of the supporting evidence.

The written text should be organized in the same order as the standards. Responses should not merely reiterate the standard. Standards state what a program must do. The response describes how the standard will be met by describing both the content and processes that will be used to implement the program and by providing evidence to support the explanation. The written text may be organized in a variety of ways. However, responses that do not address each standard will be considered incomplete.

Lines of appropriate supporting evidence will vary with each standard. Some examples of supporting evidence helpful for review teams include:

  • Charts and graphic organizers to illustrate program organization and design
  • Descriptions of faculty qualifications, including vitae for full time faculty
  • Course or module outlines showing the sequence of course topics, classroom activities, materials and texts used, and out-of-class assignments
  • Specific descriptions of assignments and other formative assessments that demonstrate how prospective educators will reinforce and extend key concepts and/or demonstrate an ability or competence
  • Documentation of materials to be used, including tables of contents of textbooks and identification of assignments from the texts, and citations for other reading assignments.

Implementing an Experimental Standards Program

Once the Committee on Accreditation has approved the Experimental Program, the program may be implemented. The program will participate in all accreditation activities in concert with the institution’s or program sponsor’s schedule. This means that the program will submit biennial reports focused on measures of candidate competence and an additional section focused on the evaluation, to date, of the experimental program.

The program will provide the Committee on Accreditation with a status report on the progress of the program half-way through the proposed timeline for the program and will also participate in Program Assessment according to the accreditation system. Candidates, completers, faculty, and employers from the program will participate in the site review activities as scheduled.

As for all programs, staff will review biennial and evaluation reports. Based on these reviews, staff will prepare recommendations for program continuance or interventions to the Committee on Accreditation.

The program will submit a final evaluation of the program to the Committee on Accreditation, according to the approved Research Design, including next steps and plans for dissemination of program evaluation results to appropriate audiences (other California educator preparation programs, professional organization conferences, and journal articles, for example). Depending on the results of the experimental program, staff may recommend that the program continue but under regular program standards consistent with the type of credential earned. This conversion depends on the degree of flexibility permitted by the current program standards. In cases where the experimental program exceeds the flexibility of the program standards, staff will prepare an agenda item asking for direction from the Committee on Accreditation. If necessary, staff will present the problem to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing for their guidance.

Updated December 18, 2023