NAACLS continues to monitor the quickly evolving challenges programs are facing with the COVID-19 virus.

The NAACLS Board of Directors designed the current standards to provide programs flexibility of delivery methods, under the best of circumstances.  In the case of extreme situations, as we are currently facing, we encourage programs to take advantage of this flexibility.

As some of our program directors may remember, we sent out several standards last fall for public comment. One of those proposed changes dealt directly with teach-out plans. However, the public comment standards have not been voted on by the NAACLS Board of Directors. In the interest of clarity, NAACLS would like to remind everyone of the current standard language.

Standard V.D. A teach-out plan must be developed and submitted to NAACLS within 30 days of the official announcement of the closure of the program. 

A temporary inability to serve students does not require any action or a teach-out plan. If your program is altering your current processes to handle this extreme situation, your program does not need NAACLS’ approval of these changes or need to notify NAACLS of these changes. Notification and a subsequent teach-out plan are only necessary if there is an official announcement of the cessation of service by the program for the students. At the point of that announcement, the program has thirty days to submit an action plan.

Until then, programs are encouraged to continue to innovate and use creative problem solving to maintain compliance with the standards. NAACLS is impressed by remarkable collegial collaboration and innovative ideas and discussion occurring in real-time on the CLS Educators Listserv.  

If you have any specific questions, please feel free to contact the office. Otherwise, keep an eye on the NAACLS News, all announcements regarding COVID-19, as well as other matters, will be posted here.