School Accreditation

What is AdvancED’s accreditation? All schools in Nebraska are required to be accreditated. AdvancED is the largest accreditation agency, working with schools all across the world. AdvancED brings together more than 100 years of experience and the expertise of three US-based accreditation agencies — the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (NCA CASI), Northwest Accreditation Commission (NWAC), and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement (SACS CASI). The AdvancED Accreditation Process, a protocol embraced around the world, is a clear and comprehensive program of evaluation and external review, supported by research-based standards, and dedicated to helping schools, districts and education providers continuously improve.

What will we find? By participating in this process, the review team will tell us we are doing well. These are referred to as our Powerful Practices. We will also be given some areas of weaknesses to improve upon. These are our Required Actions. We, as a school, have to respond to these following our visit. This will help provide us with some focus for our school improvement for the upcoming cycle.

The process AdvancED accreditation schools are involved in a 5-year-cycle working toward school improvement. Every 5 th year, the school hosts an external visit where a team of educators rate the school’s processes of school improvement. Our role is to: Take stock of themselves in relation to a set of research based quality standards Establish a vision, assess their current reality, implement and improvement plan, monitor progress and evaluate results Enhance the school’s best thinking with the insights and perspectives of an external review team. This is year five for our schools. Our external visit is scheduled for March All of our documentation is due 4 week prior to allow the team time to review our materials.

External Visit The external team will be rating us based upon five standards Standard 1: Purpose and Direction Standard 2: Governance and Leadership Standard 3: Teaching and Assessing for Learning Standard 4: Resources and Support Systems Standard 5: Using Results for Continuous Improvement There are a total of 33 indicators under each standard. Early Childhood has some more indicators. Workbook containing the standards are located at:

Also during the external visit The team will be doing interviews with students, staff, and community members. The team will also be conducting 20 minute classroom observations. These are observations looking for student engagement/focus. The form they use for their observations is called the ELEOT. The link for the form is: 8ff8444ac4/ELEOT.pdf 8ff8444ac4/ELEOT.pdf Looking at the form, which area usually receives the lowest scores?

School’s responsibilities We need your help The CIP team will be preparing a self-assessment, improvement plan, executive summary, assurances, and student performance and stakeholder diagnostic documents. There will be surveys of the staff, students, and community members. We also need to gather evidence/documentation to show the external team that we are meeting the indicators/standards. AdvancED refers to these as artifacts. The artifacts we need will have to come from all three buildings, so we need help from everyone.

Artifacts To get an idea of what some sample artifacts are, look at the Self Assessment Workbook for Schools and at the end of each Standard are some examples. Workbook can be found at: assessment_schools_workbook.pdfhttp:// assessment_schools_workbook.pdf

What we are asking of you… When the staff surveys come out, please fill it out. If you are a parent of a student, don’t duplicate the survey For today, familiarize yourself with the standards/indicators and determine if you have any artifacts we can use. If you have them, them to me to tell me which standard/indicator they align to, and which building they apply to (artifacts can apply to more than one indicator/building). Review the school improvement website and look through the artifacts present (Standards 3-5) to identify which building the current artifacts apply to. Address: Continually review your practices to see if you have any of these artifacts.