Superintendent Gregory Franklin in Tustin, Calif., chairs the Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ school accreditation division. PHOTO COURTESY OF TUSTIN, CALIF., UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT.

Gregory Franklin, a superintendent in Orange County, Calif., has played an instrumental part in the formal accreditation process that for more than a century has been holding schools accountable to standards driven by the priorities of the day, from counting books stocked in the school library to ranking schools by standardized test scores to today’s focus on building capacity for continuous improvement.

Speaking to the impact of accreditation, Franklin recounts a case involving a “very large public high school in California that was really letting its kids down. … You could have pointed in every direction and found someone to blame. The instruction was poor, the leadership was poor and there was a lot of labor strife.”

The visiting peer review team documented these deficiencies in its accreditation report for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, something the school district should have addressed in its own self-analysis, Franklin says, “but sometimes dysfunction gets in the way of that.”

A year later, the peer reviewers, including Franklin, returned to find most of the school’s leadership and some key faculty leaders had been replaced and a facilitator had been brought in “to get everybody rolling in the right direction,” says the superintendent since 2011 of the 24,000-student Tustin, Calif., Unified School District. “I’m certain that improvement would not have happened without the accreditation process.”

Regaining Relevance

Today, Franklin chairs the pre-college arm of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of the nation’s four independent and nonprofit accreditation agencies for elementary and secondary schools. (The three others are the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the Middle States Association’s Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools and Cognia, formerly known as AdvancED, which includes the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement, the Northwest Accreditation Commission and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement.)

Over time, the mechanisms of the accreditation process have remained constant, with comprehensive self-study reports and volunteer peer review visits followed by an accreditation report and determination that sometimes requires additional attention and review. Yet when it comes to what’s measured and for what purpose, the accrediting agencies have had to evolve continually, adapting and adding standards and services in step with state mandates and school district needs.

Mark Elgart, president and CEO of Cognia and former chief executive of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, says accrediting bodies have had “long and hard debates” over the past two decades over how to remain relevant as states, driven by federal mandates, developed their own accountability systems based largely on high-stakes testing administered each spring. Lost in the process, however, was adequate attention to learning growth over time and the distinct needs of high-poverty schools and the students they serve.

“The problem with a test score [is] it doesn’t address the underlying causes. It simply tells you the kids are not doing well,” Elgart says. “It doesn’t tell school officials what they need to change for kids to do better. It simply helps you rank schools, and that’s insufficient.”

He contends the independent, nonprofit accrediting agencies focus largely on improving student learning and, when examining institutions, “it’s not just about what they’ve done in their past, but also about their capacity to improve in the future.”

Students at Center

Before becoming an education consultant working with 40 superintendents across Florida, James Hamilton had first-hand experiences with accreditation as an assistant principal for curriculum, high school principal, assistant superintendent for instruction and deputy superintendent in Hillsborough County, Fla., the nation’s seventh-largest school district.

“The emphasis used to be how many books you had, how much square footage you had, how many guidance counselors you had and your teacher-pupil ratio,” Hamilton says. “Things like that were the key standards in the accreditation process, and quite frankly we didn’t have the financial resources to do that K-12. So we accredited only high schools because we had to have students graduate with diplomas from accredited schools so they could be eligible for college admission and, as a corollary in many cases, financial aid.”

Over time, he observed the accreditation standards shifted to a more student-centric approach, focusing more “on what students are doing, as opposed to what we used to get them to do. Not only could we afford to measure that, we had a responsibility to measure that.”

Under this formulation, accreditation is a matter of accountability and community engagement beyond the schoolhouse doors, indicating to parents, business leaders and other local stakeholders “that there’s an external evaluation agency that provides a process by which the performance of schools is measured,” Hamilton says, “and that schools are certified if they meet the standards of that external agency.”

Hamilton likens the process to “peer review in the scientific community,” adding, “It gives the community some assurances, other than test-driven state accountability systems, that things that are supposed to be happening in schools are actually happening. That kids are engaged and learning the content they’re supposed to be learning. That they’re getting the social-emotional support that this world requires. And that the interaction and engagement with parents that should be happening, is happening.”

Districtwide Model

According to a 2018 report by Education Next, a journal sponsored by the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, about 20 states require public schools to be accredited by an outside body. The field of accreditation clients has expanded somewhat in recent years to include private, parochial, charter, international and virtual schools.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the long-standing accreditation agencies started breaking off their preK-12 divisions from their higher education counterparts and have since expanded their reach to states beyond their traditional, regional boundaries. Services have expanded to include professional development and special certifications, such as for STEM and early childhood education, and in concert with other interest-driven professional bodies such as the National Catholic Educational Association.

Methodological advancements, ushered in by new technologies, have brought data-driven improvements. This especially is the case at Cognia, which works to generate easily digested data that can be used by educators to improve student preparation for life after high school graduation. The holistic standards address student engagement, social-emotional well-being and college and career readiness. Accreditation surveys have become more comprehensive, involving parents, business leaders, students and teachers. In some cases, entire districts are being accredited to ensure a unified effort across the school system’s primary and secondary schools.

Cognia made a major move in the direction of districtwide accreditation in response to the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. “Superintendents before then were largely political educational leaders in the community, but they were not held accountable for individual student achievement in the way they are today,” Elgart says. “We created district accreditation, where we accredited the whole district in a systemic process, and we involved all the schools, the district central administration and the school board.”

The first system in the country to achieve district accreditation was the Fulton County, Ga., Public Schools in 2004. Now, 77 percent of Cognia’s accredited public schools are part of the district model.

Middle school students in Tustin, Calif., competing in a robotics competition, have benefited from data analysis taking place during district accreditation. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN GARRETT, TUSTIN, CALIF., PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION

Offering Assurance

The evolution in K-12 accreditation is apparent to others leading the once tradition-bound accrediting agencies.

“Probably the biggest shift for us over the past 10 years has been to focus as much on school improvement and being an agency that drives growth over time as it is focused on accountability,” says Cameron Staples, CEO of the nation’s oldest education accrediting body, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, founded in 1885. It today accredits 700 public schools, 600 independent schools and 300 schools overseas.

“We still concern ourselves with the core elements of a good school in terms of health and safety, the curriculum and obviously the teaching and learning that occurs,” Staples says. “But we find our value as an accreditor is in both helping schools set goals and improvement plans, and to monitor those plans, holding them accountable to our standards.” (See related story.)

Barry Groves, president of the Western region’s Accrediting Commission for Schools, which works with 5,200 schools, says the high-stakes nature of accreditation nationwide historically was viewed as a prerequisite for students’ admission to college and eligibility for federal financial aid. This was true during his nine years as a superintendent in Northern California during which time he ob-served the evolution of school accreditation when the process first counted “the number of earthquake and fire drills” taking place in the schools, he says.

Today, accreditation is a more valuable resource, with Groves noting, “It provides protocols and tools to improve education for all students, whereas before it was just a compliance checklist document.”

Lisa McCauley, president of the Middle States Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Education, views accreditation now as assurance that schools will “meet standards using a process for growth and improvement” and that the days of the “one-size fits-all approach” are gone from accreditation reviews. “Every school is unique and you can’t just say it’s a pass or fail,” she says. “You need a personalized approach and more flexibility.”

As for Franklin, the veteran Tustin, Calif., superintendent who chairs the Western region’s Accrediting Commission for Schools, accreditation has become a vital element of school improvement.

“When I first started, it was very process-oriented,” he says. “You could describe your process without have to worry too much if it was working, which wasn’t very helpful.” Now, he adds, with a focus on “improvement plans coming out of a very thorough review of data analysis, looking at student achievement and taking stock of what parents and students are saying, you would be crazy not to make that a part of your improvement process.”

LINDA CHION KENNEY is an education freelance writer in Tampa, Fla.