The Standards for Accreditation

The Standards are fundamental to the accreditation process given that:

1. a school should use a self-appraisal of the Standards in making its own preliminary determination as to whether it is ready to seek accreditation.  The Indicators for each Standard are intended to clarify the meaning of the Standard and also to serve as a source of evidence of the school’s alignment.
2. the Preliminary/Preparatory Visitors will use the Standards in assessing a school’s readiness to undertake the evaluation and accreditation process.  Schools are encouraged to suggest other or additional indicators of their alignment with the standard.
3. the Standards are vital points of reference during the school’s Self-Study process.  Schools will rate themselves against both the Indicators and the Standards.
4. the Visiting Team will use the Standards in evaluating a school and in deciding whether or not to recommend Accreditation (and what qualifications, if any, to put upon its recommendation).  The Visiting Team will rate the school's alignment with the standards, but will not give a written rating against the Indicators.
5. the accreditation agencies will consider as one of the factors the extent to which a school aligns with the Standards when making the final decision on granting or withholding accreditation.  Also important factors are the commitment and capacity of the school to improve.

While the Standards for Accreditation are to be understood in one sense as minimum requirements, they are at the same time solid benchmarks. Any school with a high degree of alignment with the standards will be a school of genuine quality, clearly meriting a seal of approval from the educational community.

Accreditation decisions will reflect an analysis of the degree of the school’s alignment with the Standards and a consideration of the school’s plans for improvement in areas of concern. A school will be judged in terms of the total pattern it presents, and a lesser degree of alignment with certain of the Standards may be compensated for by a school’s overall quality.  However, a school will be expected to explain the reasons for less than full alignment and to provide evidence that the basic intent of the Standards is being observed.  One source of that evidence is the related Indicators; but schools may offer other evidence.

A guiding principle of the CIS and NEASC Evaluation and Accreditation program is respect for the freedom of schools to determine their own goals and ways of implementing them.  Hence the Standards are not intended to impose any specific philosophy but simply to state the generally accepted wisdom of the educational community as to what constitutes sound quality in any school, regardless of its particular philosophy.  It is the intention that no school offering a broad general program of education of genuine quality should fail to come within the frame-work of these Standards.

N.B. It is the responsibility of the Head and other members of the school community to examine the Standards thoroughly prior to the Preliminary/Preparatory Visit and to draw the attention of the Preliminary/Preparatory Visitors to strengths and areas in need of strengthening, especially cases in which the school itself feels it may have difficulty in aligning with the Standards.