A Quality Assurance Program (QAP) has been established by North Carolina as a means of assuring competent professional programs for teacher education. The QAP is based on two major premises: (1) Crucial competencies for teacher effectiveness can be identified, verified, and validated; and (2) Teacher education begins at initial entry and progresses in an orderly and sequential manner to graduation. The QAP will deal with a comprehensive evaluation of all requirements for entrance to colleges of education. The State Board of Education will set acceptable performance levels for two screening tests which are part of these entrance requirements. The General Education Achievement Test will have items organized around the areas of English and English usage, literature, the fine arts, social studies, science and mathematics. A written test will measure the use of language in response to specifically assigned topics. The QAP is concerned with establishing a means of clarifying, with colleges and local school boards, the competencies required for entrance to the colleges' teacher education programs. A major part of the planning generated by the QAP has therefore dealt with identifying 49 teacher competencies and general core competencies related directly to what North Carolina teachers are expected to know and perform. A strong component of the QAP is student teaching. Specific and uniform standards supporting the student teaching process have been established. Colleges of education and local school systems have developed procedures to assure full cooperation between institutions during the student teaching period. It is assumed that successful completion of the student teaching experience will allow the students to take the final criterion-referenced tests designed to determine whether they have mastered the minimum academic and professional competencies considered essential for successful teaching. (JD)