Wesley College Education Program Loses Accreditation

Published on Friday, January 28th, 2011 by Sebastian Grant Category: College News

Dover, DE (CollegeToCareers.com) – Wesley College, Delaware’s oldest private college, lost accreditation for their education program. The institution was compelled to enter in an agreement with the state this Tuesday to allow their enrolled graduates to continue the coursework for their teaching licenses. Around 210 students are currently enrolled in the education unit. The Delaware Department of Education granted Wesley College a one and a half year grace period to fix last year’s audit findings. If the college doesn’t manage to show satisfactory improvement by the summer of 2012, their license will be permanently revoked, and graduates won’t be allowed to teach in the state of Delaware.

The report of the audit conducted in 2010 showed an overworked and underpaid faculty, poor organization, lack of effectiveness and an overall extremely poor performance of the teaching process after analyzing the school’s records and the data collected between 2007 and 2009. The board of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) revoked Wesley’s accreditation starting December 31. In their defense, representatives of Wesley College said the collected data was highly irrelevant for today’s performance of the college:

“A lot of important changes have been made throughout 2010. Unfortunately, the NCATE only audited the period between 2007 and 2009. Their findings are obsolete and definitely don’t justify such a drastic decision,” said Patricia Dwyer, VP of academic affairs at Wesley College.

Starting 2010, Wesley has hired additional faculty members and the average wage was increased by 15%. A modern data management system has been implemented to track student records and their progress. Since professors are no longer overworked, they find more time to bind with students and student-teacher relationships have improved. “It’s sad,” believes Dwyer, “that our accreditation gets revoked after we’ve put in so much work and progress is obvious. We surely hope the NCATE will change their minds in the near future, we shouldn’t have to wait for one and a half years.”

Graduates might have a hard time finding jobs in other states as teachers if Wesley doesn’t gain back its accreditation by their graduation date. Yi Huang, vice president for accreditation at NCATE, explained that, in many cases, their ability to land on a job right after graduation depends on the state. Maryland, for example, requires all teachers to come from accredited programs, while Pennsylvania doesn’t impose any restrictions.

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