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CAA and CFCC standards
Of particular interest to faculty, staff and student in communication sciences and disorders are:
 | the adoption of new accreditation standards (effective in 1999) by the Council on Academic Accreditation (CAA) of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA), which incorporate a focus on programmatic outcomes assessment, and which require that programs carefully monitor student progress toward certification; and |
| the adoption of new clinical certification standards by the Council for Clinical Certification (CFCC) of ASHA, in both audiology (to be implemented in 2007) and speech-language pathology (effective in 2005), with extensive requirements for demonstration of “knowledge” and “skills” for clinical certification. |
Although the CAA and CFCC standards apply primarily to entry-level professional degree programs in audiology and speech-language pathology, there are many ways that they are highly relevant to undergraduate and doctoral programs in communication sciences and disorders.
The focus by regional accrediting bodies on educational outcomes assessment in the early and mid-1990s was primarily on undergraduate programs; this may be why programs in communicative sciences and disorders are relatively late becoming involved in campus programs for identifying and assessing outcomes. This is not to imply that we are not, and have not been, engaged in assessing what students learn in our programs. Alumni surveys, employer surveys, PRAXIS scores, and student surveys have been used by most programs for many years and are certainly useful in determining some aspects of our graduates’ proficiency.
This text adapted from:
Hallowell, B. & Lund, N. (1998). Fostering program improvements through a focus on educational outcomes. In Council of Graduate Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders, Proceedings of the twenty-first annual conference on graduate education, 32-56.
See much more by clicking on Standards.