Soon there will be a new player in teacher preparation as Kaplan Inc. announced last week that it would open a school of education for the 2004 2005 academic year to be headed by former New York City schools chancellor Harold Levy.

Kaplan which is the largest division of the Washington Post Company with annual revenues of $621 million already operates a law school and 46 undergraduate institutions and is looking to expand into higher education. The education school project will function on a distance-learning model and will offer associate s-, bachelor s- and master s degrees.

Hearing of this development, Arthur Wise, president of the Nation Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, said that he hoped that Kaplan would seek NCATE accreditation. Noting that other for-profit, distance learning teacher education programs had already been NCATE-accredited, Wise threateningly intoned The University of Phoenix has made it very clear that it plans to seek accreditation from us.