The current generation of American public-school students has grown up in the era of centralized, standardized data. Anyone curious about how local schools were doing could look at pass rates on annual exams in math and reading, the foundation of federally mandated, test-based accountability.
New rules are poised to change this system. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), written to shrink the federal government’s reach, enables states to embrace a more holistic approach to quality control. Test scores are still important, but so are attendance, school climate, graduation rates, and other non-academic measures. As states redesign their accountability systems, the challenge is how to best measure, report, and utilize this information to improve student learning.
One industry is offering itself up for the job: accreditation. For more than a century, schools have hired nonprofit accreditors to determine whether their operations and outcomes meet external quality standards, thereby earning an accreditation seal of approval. While accreditation is better known at institutions of higher education, where it is required for schools to participate in federal student-aid programs, it is also practiced, though little-understood, at K–12 public, public charter, and private schools.
How common, consequential, and rigorous is K–12 accreditation? How do accreditation reviews work? And do they offer a more holistic, and potentially more useful, approach to quality control for public and private schools?
For the most part, hardly anyone knows. An Education Next review of policies and practices across the United States found broad misunderstanding, uneven public reporting, and unpredictable variation in requirements and consequences.
In states like Georgia and Missouri, accreditation status makes headlines and has dramatically affected students’ trajectories and the economic fortunes of their hometowns. In states like Florida, it is neither required nor reported to the public. States such as Colorado and Virginia accredit districts themselves, while Michigan and Wyoming, among others, require districts to earn the status through an approved agency to remain in good standing. The review processes range from self-administered checklists to in-depth, in-person audits. And among schools and districts that seek the status, an estimated 2 percent are denied the credential. [TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE.]
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