Does Your Child Attend an Accredited School?

By Rabbi Nochem Kaplan

I spent some time this winter doing preliminary accreditation visits to schools in the Northwest. The purpose of such a visit is to assess to what degree the schools are ready to undertake an accreditation protocol. In discussions with teachers and parents I found that I needed to explain why a school might be interested in the process and how it could benefit from it, rather than practical details of school improvement. Most said, “Tell me why I should do this” rather than, “Explain to me what I need to do”. So I thought I’d write a piece about the benefits of sending your children to an accredited school.

When I visit a doctor, I look for his Board certification. It tells me that the doctor’s medical expertise meets the highest standards of his profession. It means that his fellow doctors have reviewed and approved of the way he practices medicine. Your child’s school should be professional enough to undergo the same kind of review.

There is a good reason that the recently democratized countries of the former Soviet Union, emerging democracies in South America and the Middle East, and even still-Communist China are choosing American accreditation. The process, while not flawless, assures a school’s felicity to its mission and its continuous search to improve itself.

To undertake an accreditation process, a school must be confident about where it is going and why it has chosen to go there. It does not need to excel at everything, it does but it does have to know how it needs improve.

Some Historical Background:

In the late nineteenth century, education in America embarked upon an unprecedented experiment. America was making education available to everyone; no longer would education be the privilege of the elite. Higher and professional education became the ultimate goal of the young, bright, and talented. New colleges were founded everywhere and they led to the emergence of an increasingly growing upper-middle class.

Government, in order to maintain academic freedom and still assure quality and integrity, promoted the creation of a non-governmental process: peer review. The country was divided into six regions and an accreditation association was organized within each region. These accrediting bodies, established by the best schools as membership organizations, set standards which schools and colleges had to meet in order to be accepted. Schools were expected to measure themselves against the standards and document how their education met or exceeded them and then undergo a peer review.

Educators knew that the best way to assure adherence to standards was to have a likeminded professional group visit a school and verify its compliance with them. What developed was a process which assured that a school was indeed devoted to its stated mission and that it was dedicated providing quality education. The essential nature of accreditation remains the same even though the process has evolved over the years.

What happens during a school’s accreditation process?

We all do some things the way we do them because that’s the way we do them, period. It doesn’t mean we’re thoughtless or indifferent, it means we are comfortable doing things the way we do them and so that’s we way we do them. Schools too, get used to doing things the way they have been done, sometimes without due consideration to changed circumstances. When schools get into this kind of rut, children pay the price: their education begins to suffer.

What if all schools would periodically examine their education processes to assure that they are fully aligned with their mission and with best practices? What if all aspects of a school were periodically reviewed for quality assurance? What if all school personnel met periodically to retool and assure that their contribution to the educational process is at its maximum? What would happen if the curriculum was continuously reviewed and updated by its practitioners?

We would have an accredited school.  

During the accreditation process a school examines its mission and vision for relevance, its educational programs for rigor and meaningfulness, and its educational practices for proof of success. The school measures itself against established standards of excellence and adjusts what needs fine-tuning or change. It documents the process as it progresses through the accreditation protocol and hosts a visit by likeminded educators to verify its own findings. The final and perhaps most crucial aspect of the process is the adoption of a strategic plan for future growth and improvement, making it a continuous improvement process.

Shouldn’t your child’s school be accredited?

Accreditation is neither an expensive process nor a frivolous one. It is a thorough review with an eye toward the future. Why then not go thorough accreditation? Or, if it’s so good, what can be so bad?

Some schools are just not sure enough of themselves to feel comfortable having a group of independent people snooping around. Others feel they don’t need peer-review approval to know that they are providing quality education.

I have met many educators who were skeptics when they started the process but I can categorically state that they invariably became enthusiasts by its conclusion. Rabbi Yoseph Denberg, dean of the Hebrew Academy Community School in Margate, FL, initially undertook his school’s accreditation program because the local UJC Education Bureau asked for it. By the time it was completed he became its most ardent supporter. He experienced his school’s emergence as a more confident educational enterprise, providing excellence to its pupils  

Rabbi Shea Harlig, dean of the Desert Hebrew Academy in Las Vegas, NV, decided to have his school go through an accreditation protocol because it seemed like the thing to do to build parents’ confidence. Mid-project he complained about the demands, but at its end he talked about the heuristic effect and the release of new energy and purpose.

Since the establishment of the Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch National Accreditation Board, a growing number of Chabad schools are becoming accredited and thousands of children are the recipients of better education because of it. Shouldn’t your child’s school be accredited?