Championing the Model Code of Ethics for Educators (MCEE)

Adopted by the NASDTEC Executive Board in June 2015, the MCEE is a common set of professional ethical principles that provide a model of best practice which jurisdictions can adopt or adapt to help ensure states, EPPs, and P-12 Local Units of Administration (LEAs) are effectively equipping educators in ethical understanding and decision making so as not to violate the boundaries of professional practice. The principles of the MCEE define ethical behavior, ethical best practice, and ethical responsibilities held in common by P-12 educators. Each principle is undergirded by performance indicators that more specifically define aspects within each principle.

The role of NCAEE with regard to the MCEE is to 1) ensure educators and partners know about the code and its use, including resources that support the code, and 2) keep the code a living document, making revisions where needed with approval by the NASDTEC Executive Board.

Raising awareness of the professional responsibility for ethical practice

As part of a continuum of accountability, and responsibility, across the effective school staffing continuum from preservice preparation to induction to retention and renewal, Educator Preparation Providers’ (EPPs), schools and school districts, state agencies and other organizations have the critically important role of ensuring educators have content competency, pedagogical expertise, and dispositions that reflect best practice.  Just as critical is ensuring educators and educator candidates are ethical professionals in the profession of education. The role of NCAEE is to establish and reinforce the need for an intentional, preventive focus on ethics.

Equipping educators in ethical understanding

The NCAEE will serve as a conduit of communication from multiple sources, including its Communication  Partners, regarding resources that provide avenues for instruction in ethical principles to guide decision making and other initiatives aimed at ethical instruction and/or assessment.

Supporting educators’ ethical decision making

 The NCAEE, working with its Communication  Partners to produce resources that support ethical instruction, produce video resources around exemplars regarding each of the principles, and establish and maintain an asynchronous communication support structure for inquiries about the MCEE and its professional application

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