This paper analyzes research on accreditation, licensure, and certification standards that have impacted teacher education programs, providing a historical perspective of how and why standards came about in teacher education and examining each of the standards bodies in teacher education: the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC). Certification standards developed by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) are also examined. Using a policy analysis framework grounded in critical theory, these standards are examined from the perspectives of the challenges, limitations, and problems inherent in standards-setting processes for institutions of higher education. The study involved an ERIC search and searches of Web sites of national organizations involved in higher education standards. The analysis provides information about how policies inherent in the standards reproduce the workings of the school and of society; the impact of the context on the standard setting and implementation process; how the policies address curricular issues, pedagogy, and evaluation; whose values count as knowledge and are represented in policy, and how those values become institutionalized; and which implicit assumptions are found within educational policies advanced by the standards movement in higher education. (Contains 49 endnotes.) (SM)