Reflecting on Reaccreditation

Brad Rathgeber

Later this week, we’ll be turning in our reaccreditation report. (It’s hard to believe it has been seven years since our initial accreditation!)  At its best, reaccreditation gives a school the chance to be reflective in its practices and careful in its future planning -- thankfully that’s been the case with our process.  In particular, we wanted to do a comprehensive reflection that engaged a wide range of constituents from our schools in the process.  So, we hired an outside research firm to gather thoughts from the community -- thank you to so many of you for participating! I thought I’d share with you a few things we learned:
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• Independent schools see significant challenges on the horizon. When asked to rank the top four challenges that they face, educators noted: increasing tuition costs (63%) finding a healthy school/life balance for students (53%); creating an innovative curriculum (37%) and decreasing enrollments/admissions (35%) as the top challenges.
• Schools see One Schoolhouse as a part of the solution to these challenges. Educators say that the three primary reasons that they engage with One Schoolhouse are: to expand course offerings, to meet student interests, and because it is a cost effective, quality option. 91% of respondents familiar with One Schoolhouse see our courses as equal or greater in value to the cost. And, when asked what words they most associate with One Schoolhouse, participants said: collaborative, professional, and innovative.
• Schools see online learning differently than they did years ago. 90% of survey participants agreed that “Online education is an effective supplement to independent schools.”  Another 84% agreed that “Online education creates opportunities for faculty and faculty development.” And, 71% agree that “Our school is equipped to include online education in our curriculum.” These results were incredible to me, as someone who has been working with independent schools in online education for nine years now, and demonstrative of great progress.
• Educators are looking for different types of professional development. 91% of educators encouraged us to create “short, focused online professional development courses for faculty.”  This month, after months of prototyping, we launched On-Demand Online Courses to serve this need. Our current group of 13 courses is just the beginning… look for more offerings available by the time that summer rolls around. And, 73% of educators wanted in-person opportunities for them to learn about personalized learning, online learning, blended learning, and related subjects.  That’s why we created Academic Leaders Retreats with our friends at the Independent Curriculum Group.

It’s clear that independent schools have challenges -- but we’re finding ways to work together to solve them.

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