North Carolina’s State Board of Education has approved recommendations for changing how the state evaluates teacher-training programs, but the recommendations are not yet in force. The board still needs to adopt rules to put the proposed system into effect, leaving the timing and details of any new enforcement framework unsettled.
The state currently has 89 approved educator preparation programs responsible for training thousands of K-12 educators across North Carolina, which serves roughly 1.5 million public school students, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. About 84% of those programs are affiliated with the state's public and private colleges and universities, while the rest are run by private organizations, school districts and charter schools. The State Board is supposed to evaluate each program annually and can revoke a program's authority to train new teachers if it falls short — though a revoked program could still finish training students already enrolled.
A Longer Runway Before Sanctions
The proposal would replace the current model, under which a program can lose its status within three years of its first sanction. Board member Ann Bullock said in September that timeline was too aggressive, according to the News & Observer. The revised model, developed by the Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission, would evaluate programs on six measures instead of three and assign them to one of two improvement tracks.
A program falling short on at least three of the six measures would enter a corrective-action track and have four years to improve before its status could be revoked. A program missing one or two measures would enter a continuous-improvement track, with eight years before facing that consequence. Board member Eric Davis said the changes continue efforts to hold programs preparing North Carolina’s future teachers to high standards, according to the News & Observer.
What the Report Would Change About Grading
The report recommends changes to what counts in a program’s rating. It would use student academic growth rather than simply counting how many students passed exams, on the grounds that growth is a stronger indicator of program quality than raw proficiency numbers. It also recommends removing student subgroup performance data from the grading model. Regulators say using those data could discourage programs from recruiting candidates from groups that historically test less well, potentially harming teacher diversity, according to The Raleigh News & Observer.
The report further recommends adding more teacher licensure exam results to the model, including the Foundations of Reading exam, and creating separate accountability ratings for “traditional” graduates — students who earn a degree while studying to become teachers — versus “residency” graduates, who typically teach in schools while taking classes at their preparation programs, as reported by The Raleigh News & Observer. Residency programs often serve people who already hold a degree and are changing careers into teaching, and the News & Observer notes that an increasing number of teachers are entering the profession through that route.
Years in the Making, Still Not Finished
North Carolina has been wrestling with how to grade these programs for nearly a decade. Legislation passed in 2017 first required the State Board to develop an evaluation model, and lawmakers added requirements in 2019 to grade programs on student test results, new teachers' annual evaluations and educator satisfaction survey data, as noted by North Carolina General Assembly. The Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission developed an accountability model based on graduates' first year of teaching back in 2020, The Raleigh News & Observer reported at The Raleigh News & Observer, and lawmakers this year passed legislation requiring fresh recommendations on the model and any laws that need to change.
The State Board has not adopted the rules needed to put the revised model into effect, the News & Observer reports. The debate comes as the route into teaching is changing: according to EdNC, the share of new North Carolina teachers trained through the state’s educator preparation programs fell to 35% in 2025, from nearly 60% in 2021. At the same time, enrollment in those programs reached 5,825 in 2024-25, up 25% over the past decade.
What workforce data can tell us
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction reported a 7.4% teacher vacancy rate for 2024-25, down from 7.6% the previous year. That broader rate includes some positions filled by temporarily licensed educators or rehired retirees; when counting only positions that remained unstaffed, the rate was closer to 1.2%, the department said. Teacher attrition was 10.11% in 2024-25, up slightly from 9.88% in 2023-24. These workforce measures do not establish a connection to the proposed accountability changes, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
How North Carolina Compares
North Carolina’s effort is part of a broader push to connect teacher-preparation programs with the outcomes of their graduates. At least 16 states have taken steps toward holding programs accountable for graduates’ value-added impact on student test scores. But a research article published on PMC says it remains unclear whether differences in program quality are large enough to make a meaningful difference. In North Carolina, the proposed changes still await the rules needed for implementation.
