The US student population is increasing; consequently, 50,000 additional teachers will be needed within the next ten years. Overcrowded teacher education programs in traditional universities cannot guarantee the availability of necessary classes, however, and students desiring a teaching credential anticipate an extended time frame for credential completion and entrance into the classroom. There is growing interest in the benefits of accelerated programs to meet this critical need. Accelerated courses are taught sequentially (one at a time) rather than in traditional parallel fashion in which several classes are taken at once. Researchers contend that such a sequential model seems to reduce the number of distractions in students' lives so that they can give more focused attention to one subject. While compression of classes is thought by some to lead to weaker learning outcomes and that the crammed curriculum does not allow adequate time for reflection, researchers have found that outcomes from compressed courses equal (and sometimes surpass) outcomes from traditional course formats (Scott & Conrad, 1992). National University trains more teachers than any other university in California and employs such an accelerated format--a learning model that has been highly successful in training future teachers for California classrooms.