HA's Accreditation

Recently, an article appeared in the Dothan Eagle concerning AdvancED/SACS accreditation. Since then, I have received a profusion of emails, phone calls, and questions about what accreditation means and how Houston Academy approaches the process of accreditation.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am very involved in the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) accreditation process. In the last two years, I have served as an accreditation visiting team chair for three quality, independent schools in the Southeast. Additionally, I have served as a member of visiting teams for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and SAIS accreditation teams for about 20 years, during which time I have had the privilege to help accredit approximately 20 schools. I’ve also served on a roundtable to discuss and shape our accreditation process for SAIS/AdvancEd/SACS. So, to say I am unbiased towards the process of accreditation, as it has evolved over the last 25 years, would be disingenuous.

That being said, let me start by answering the questions I’ve been asked, explaining what Houston Academy’s memberships are, and addressing why we hold these memberships. In a follow-up blog post, I’ll go into detail on what’s happening with our current accreditation process.

What does it mean to be accredited?
The SAIS website does a good job defining our meaning of accreditation:

• Accreditation (noun): certification that a school meets all formal official requirements of academic excellence, curriculum, facilities, etc.
• SAIS accreditation (noun): verification that a school understands its past, present, and future and is absolutely committed to its mission and its growth mindset.

So, basically, by going through a process of accreditation, we ensure that we have met a set of rigorous standards of educational quality, that we have been visited and reviewed by a team of highly qualified educators from around the Southeast, and we have a plan to improve and grow as a school. That improvement plan must, according to SAIS guidelines, be inextricably tied to our mission.

While attending a school that is not accredited does not prohibit a student from attending college,  SAIS/SACS/AdvancED accreditation allows college admissions officers know that the school from which the applicant has graduated has gone through a thorough quality review.

Of course, there are many other accreditation agencies around the country. Independent schools in Alabama also have the opportunity to obtain AdvancEd/SACS accreditation by being members of the Alabama Independent School Association (AISA) and going through their accreditation process. Houston Academy is also a member of AISA, but we chose to get our AdvancED/SACS accreditation through SAIS. Public schools must ALL be accredited through AdvancED/SACS.

Unabashedly, though, our accreditation (SAIS/SACS AdvancEd) is the “gold standard” for independent schools. First of all, to apply for SAIS/SACS AdvancED accreditation, a school must earn membership in SAIS, which in and of itself, is a rigorous process. Not only do we have to demonstrate quality as a school (proving that we are hiring highly qualified teachers and engaging in a strong educational program), but we also must be “independent.”

What does it means to be “independent”?
Most people do not understand the difference between being a “private” school and an “independent” school. There is an important distinction to be made between the term "private" and the term "independent." The term "private" implies some sort of exclusivity. As such, "private" schools are often affiliated with a particular, narrow religious order, and in that sense, are not entirely free to set their own educational path. Often, in order to work at a private school or attend a private school, you must adhere to a certain worldview or be a member of a particular religious denomination. "Independent," on the other hand, means that we are inclusive and welcoming of all people, regardless of religion, race, creed, national origin, or socio-economic status. As such, we are the only truly independent school in the Wiregrass. That is not to say that we do not embrace faith or religion – we do. However, in independent schools like HA, we embrace the diversity of our community and attempt to learn from our differences and build on our students’ and faculty’s individual strengths.

Likewise, Houston Academy is also the only National Association of Independent Schools [NAIS] member in the Wiregrass. NAIS members must also meet rigorous admissions criteria. Not surprisingly, then, NAIS schools offer their students significant advantages over other private and public institutions. To note but a few examples, NAIS students are three times more likely to attend four-year colleges; they are two to three times more likely to graduate from a four-year college or higher, regardless of socioeconomic status,;13% more likely to do volunteer work; and they are more likely to become involved as citizens. Both the "National Educational Longitudinal Study" and the "Freshman Survey Trends Report" showed that graduates of NAIS schools were more active in civic life as young adults. Whereas 57.4 percent of all the students who participated in the "National Educational Longitudinal Study" voted in a presidential election as young adults, 75.3 percent of participating students from NAIS schools did so. NAIS graduates were also nearly twice as likely to volunteer to work for a political campaign than the group of students as a whole. Data from the 2005 "Freshman Survey Trends Report," produced by the Higher Education Research Institute, revealed that 46 percent of NAIS graduates, but 36 percent of all freshmen survey, felt that "keeping up with political affairs" was essential.

Who else has SAIS accreditation or is a member of SAIS?
As of July 1, 2015, SAIS had 365 member schools, representing over 200,000 students. Our peer schools are schools like Altamont in Birmingham; Baylor and McCallie in Chattanooga; Randolph in Huntsville; Lovett, Westminster, and Pace Academy in Atlanta; St. James and Montgomery Academy in Montgomery; Bolles and Episcopal in Jacksonville; and UMS-Wright and St. Paul’s in Mobile. If you’re interested, you can search for other member schools here. You will find that most schools with high acceptance rates at selective colleges are on this list.

So what? Who cares what memberships and accreditations a school has?
To me, aside from accreditation, our membership in SAIS, NAIS, and AISA affords great benefits for our children, our teachers, and our school. What I value most about our memberships is the collaboration and collegiality it fosters. Our teachers have access to other teachers in rigorous independent schools around the country. We attend conferences, learn about current issues and research in education, and get information on “best practices.” We also engage in list serves, webinars, and leadership training. We have access to all kinds of resource material, including cutting-edge academic research. Moreover, we have the ability to benchmark our own school data against other schools around the country that are like us. Recently, for example, our Board of Trustees revised their bylaws and practices to be more progressive and consistent with what other quality independent schools are doing around the country. Additionally, our students get to compete in academic and artistic competitions and meet with student leaders from around the region.

Importantly, too, because we are an NAIS and SAIS member, we are able to recruit and attract qualified administrative and teaching candidates from all over the country and globe. In the last three years, for example, we have hired candidates who were teaching in or from Rio de Janeiro, Minnesota, and China. Dr. Janney, our new Head of Middle School, comes to us from the independent school world after stops in North Carolina and New Jersey. Personally, I would never have even interviewed for a job at a school that was not a member of NAIS, because I understand that NAIS member schools are commitment to academic excellence and innovation. I also know that an NAIS school is growth-minded and not insular in its attitudes. NAIS schools seek global awareness and to expose their students to a wide variety of ideas. For my own children, I want them to be challenged to look beyond Dothan and understand the competitive, global environment into which they will be graduating high school.  To put it simply, I just know that if I go to an SAIS accredited member of NAIS, it’s a “good school.”

The beautiful thing about SAIS Accreditation, in particular, is that it caters to the needs of independent schools and gives us the flexibility to chart our own educational path, divested from the mandates of the federal or state government. The SAIS/SACS/AdvancED process does not require us to abide by Common Core or engage in high-stakes testing. Similarly, schools are not compared to other schools. On the contrary, the only item against which schools are judged is alignment with their own mission. What we must show is that we are working to constantly improve as a school with the goal of helping students. In short, accreditation is about growth.

In May, our SAIS Visiting Team Chair will visit Dothan and assess our compliance with SAIS standards. Next November, the full, five-member SAIS visiting team will conduct a formal visit and review our school’s strategic plan and self-study. In my next blog post, I’ll explain where we are in this process and what our goals are for the next five years here at HA.

"You Can't Fatten a Cow By Weighing It!"

In my last blog entry, I briefly alluded to the “high stakes testing” regime that has accompanied the standards movement. “High stakes” tests have taken different forms in different states, but primarily, they involve standardized tests that students have to pass in order to allow them to move on to the next grade level, graduate from high school, or pass a given class. To be clear, these exams do not typically comprise any percentage of a student’s grade in a class; these tests are the sole criteria used to measure student mastery and proficiency.

 I believe that our nations’ high stakes testing regime has had a crippling effect on our nation’s schools and has harmed our children. It’s been disheartening to teachers and administrators, but it’s also caused many school systems to focus on teaching to the tests instead of teaching children. The pressure to have students perform well on standardized tests has also led to widespread cheating by teachers and administrators across the country. In fact, there is strong evidence that some sort of cheating or score misrepresentation has gone on in 48 out of 50 states (Beckett, 2013).

One would think the nation would have moved to a different school accountability measure by now. The preponderance of educational literature has been highly critical of the federal No Child Left Behind Law [NCLB], which is the law that has required that states institute high-stakes testing.  The literature has pointed out that NCLB was an unfunded mandate based on faulty assumptions about teaching and learning; that it was antithetical to all philosophical dispositions towards a more democratic leadership style; that it ignored the possible contributions of mixed methods or qualitative studies; that it had the unintended consequence of increasing dropout rates, narrowing curricula, and discouraging good teachers; and that many of the statistics assumptions on which it was based were not accurate (Amrein & Berliner, 2003; Chatteriji, 2000; Jones, 2004; Mathis, 2003; Neuman, 2003; Slavin, 2001; Wheelock, 2003 ).  In actuality, the testing movement is working under the implicit assumption that test score indicators are the only true and “scientific” way to measure learning outcomes – ignoring all recent research on the effectiveness of constructivist pedagogy; ignoring the realities of multiple intelligences; and ignoring the truth that, by their very nature, standardized tests are pedantic, rudimentary, and limiting. Furthermore, standardized tests were never intended to decide if one went from the 8^th grade to the 9^th (Ghezzi, 2005). The tests were supposed to be “used to determine how best to teach kids” (Ghezzi, 2005), not to narrowly define what learning is and punish those who cannot operate within that narrow definition. Moreover, in a norm-referenced test, won't half of our children always be below average? This, after all, is not Lake Wobegon.[1]

I understand that many state graduation tests are criterion-referenced test – that is, they are tests designed to determine whether a student has mastered certain material. However, many of the principles of these tests are based on perceived problems which become evident through the results of norm-referenced tests, and many of these state tests are still culturally and socioeconomically biased, narrow, and invidious. Proponents of NCLB and the state legislatures generally make the assumption that the proverbial playing field is level, when clearly it is not (Neuman, 2003). For example, children from high socioeconomic status families are exposed to thirty million more word before kindergarten than children from low socioeconomic status families, and that gap does not disappear in one year; it is cumulative (Neuman, 2003). There is nothing in a state-mandated test that is going to get our poor and underprivileged children up to the level of more affluent children before they enter kindergarten, much less the 9th grade. 

To this point, there’s an old Iowa farm adage that says, “You can't fatten a cow by weighing it.” In other words, its one thing to say, “Our students are failing;” it’s another thing to figure out what to do about it. Even if you assume that criterion reference tests identify the problems correctly, they do not begin to offer us a solution.

What is most troubling to me, though, is the research that shows that since the passage of No Child Left Behind, American students’ creativity[2] has plummeted.  In 2010, Newsweek published an edition of their magazine titled “The Creativity Crisis.”  I urge you to read the magazine in its entirety, but the gist of it is that what has made America great and economically successful has been our ability to be creative. Moreover, the world is facing environmental and social problems on a global scale. These problems require leaders with an ability to come up with creative solutions to complex problems. These problems also require an ability to build consensus and work collaboratively. We have traditionally been a country of entrepreneurs and innovators. America has led the world in scientific, technological, and artistic endeavors. While children in China were learning how to take tests, American children were learning how to think.  The research tells us that as a direct result of our “drill and kill” daily drudgery and emphasis on standardized test scores, our schools have now become a place (in the words of Pat Bassett) where “creativity goes to hide.”  They have become a place where, by fourth grade, most students wallow in boredom and misery.

While researching my blog on Common Core, I read a letter to the editor in the New York Times written by Howard Miller, who is the chair of the department of secondary education at Mercy College School of Education. He said it better than I could:

The sticking point rests not with the standards, but with the ways in which we attempt to measure student learning through a combination of multiple-choice test items and short essays.

Learning is a very complex human enterprise. It is a building up of a depth and breadth of knowledge and skills over time through a process that includes trial and error, interpretation and analysis, “aha” moments of discovery, and applying what we have learned to different situations.

Standardized tests are flawed because they decontextualize learning and attempt to break it up into tiny measurable segments. With learning, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts that we do measure.

Simply put, I'm not convinced that ANY of our standardized tests accurately measure if a student has what it takes to be successful in work and life. For example, does the ACT measure persistence? Resiliency? Emotional intelligence?  Does it adequately address the competencies (“6 C’s”) that have been identified as the core facets of 21^st century learning: collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, cross-cultural competency, and character?

On a national scale, the high-stakes testing movement works to absolve society or the

broader educational system of any real accountability for the root problems in of poverty, malnutrition, housing, and unequal opportunity. We know what our root social problems are, and they are not going to be solved by giving students a test, the results of which will be used to hold them back a grade level, fire teachers, or shut down a school.

We know that education is the key to opportunity in any Western country. Many well-meaning educators support a high-stakes testing system in our country with the hope of raising standards and holding our teachers and students accountable. Our teachers and students should be held accountable. A standardized test, however, is just one measure on one day; this is not the right way to promote accountability (Ghezzi, 2005).

References

Amrein, A.L., & Berliner, D.C. (2003). The effects of high-stakes testing on student motivation and learning. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 32-37.

Bassett, P. (2011, October 11). School: Where creativity goes to hide. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.nais.org/Independent-Ideas/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=318

Beckett, L. (2013). America’s most outrageous cheating scandals. ProPublica. Retrieved from http://www.propublica.org/article/americas-most-outrageous-teacher-cheating-scandals

Biddle, B.J., and Berliner, D. C.  (2002). Unequal school funding in the United States. Educational Leadership, 59(8), 48-59.

Chatterji, M. (2000). Models and methods for examining standards-based reform accountability initiatives: Have the tools of inquiry answered pressing questions on improving schools? Review of Educational Research, 72, 345-386. 

Darder, A. (2005). Schooling and the culture of dominion: Unmasking the ideology of standardized testing. In G. E. Fischman, P. McLaren, H. Sünker, & C. Lankshear (Eds.), Critical theories, radical pedagogies, and global conflicts (pp. 3-22). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Ellinger, K., Wright, D.E. III, & Hirlinger, M. W. (1995). Brains for bucks?: School revenue and student achievement in Oklahoma. The Social Science Journal, 32(3), 299-308.

Ghezzi, P. (2005, May 8). Experts: Student testing overdone. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

Goldberg, M. (2000). An interview with Harold Hodgkinson: Demographics, ignore them at your peril. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(4), 304-307.

Jones, K. (2004). A balanced school accountability model: An alternative to high stakes testing. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(8), 598-605. 

Mathis, W. (2003). No child left behind: Costs and Benefits. Phi Delta Kappan, 84 (9), 679 – 686. 

 Miles, K., Ware, K. & Roza, M. (2003). Leveling the playing field: Creating funding equity through student-based budgeting. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(2), 114-119. 

 Miles, K.H. (2001). Putting money where it matters. Educational Leadership,59(1), 53-57.

Miller, H. (2013, June). Will common core improve schools? [Letter to the editor]. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/will-common-core-improve-schools.html?_r=0

Neuman, S.B. (2003).  From rhetoric to reality: The case of high-quality compensatory prekindergarten programs.  Phi Delta Kappan, 85(4), 286 – 291.

Odden, A. (2001). The New School Finance. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(1), 85-91. 

Odden, A. (2003). Equity and adequacy in school finance today. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(2), 120-125. 

Payne, K. J. & Biddle, B. J. (1999). Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics achievement. Educational Researcher, 28(6), 4-13.

Reville, S. P. (2004). High standards + high stakes = high achievement in Massachusetts. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(8), 591-597.  

Slavin, R.E. (2001). Putting the school back in school reform. Educational Leadership, 58(4). 

Slavin, R.E. (2003). A reader’s guide to scientifically-based research. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 12-16. 

Starratt, R. (2003). Opportunity to learn and the accountability agenda. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(4), 298-303. 

Wheelock, A. (2003). Myopia in Massachusetts. Educational Leadership, 61(3), 50-54. 

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[1] "Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."  - Garrison Keillor

[2] Generally, we use the term creativity to mean the ability to produce something original and of some use or value.