The philosophy of the special education program at the University of North Florida is to develop a competency based teacher training program at the masters level. The program is designed to produce teachers who can quantitatively demonstrate they can produce academic achievement gains and desirable behavior changes in all special education students whether they are in self contained special education classes, regular classes, resource rooms, or being prepared to be returned to the mainstream. The program's basic component revolves around 13 generic competencies that are felt to be basic to the training of all teachers. Results of a study involving 30 graduate students support the validity of each of these competencies. (Author/SBH)