Every ten years, our accrediting organization, the New England Association of Schools & Colleges, sends an ad hoc team comprised of heads, administrators and teachers from peer schools to evaluate how we're doing. It's the same drill every ten years because....because that's how they've always done it. Here is the team being introduced in Monday's assembly:
We started the "self-study" process two years ago, with the loftiest of goals. We were going to be transparent and open...self-critical...honest to a fault. We would demonstrate to the world how a school should maximize the potential benefit of evaluation. Forget re-accreditation; we wanted to grow professionally!
John Pendleton assumed on-campus leadership of the process, and brought former President of the National Association of Independent Schools Peter Relic here to facilitate a preparatory retreat. We became jacked. Energy was building!
Then we started the self-study. We assigned ourselves to dozens of small teams and scoured our curricula, systems and methods. We took swings at ourselves and beat ourselves up. It felt good; it was exhausting. The frustrating thing was that the NEASC structure didn't let us focus on what we felt really mattered! There seemed to be an assumption that we are in business for reasons shared by other college prep schools, and I doubt that's true.
The NEASC Visiting Team left Wednesday, having told us they think we're great. Here are a few of them at work on their report on Tuesday:
I hear that the National Association of Independent Schools is hiring an ad firm to help save the image Americans have of these schools. Whatever they've been doing up till now has yielded the current reputation. Maybe it's time for NEASC to self-evaulate its structures and procedures.
