Academic #4

Title: Demystifying Accreditation: Action Plans for National or Regional Accreditation

Summary: To fill the void of literature that explicates the accreditation process, Wood provides a how-to guide taking the reader through the procedure step-by-step. Although accrediting schools of higher education has become increasingly popular, many schools are without initial guidance on how best to prepare for a pending examination of their school.

Topic: Accreditation of all schools of education

Category: Academic

What is it? An article appearing in the journal, Innovative Higher Education.

Publication Information: Innovative Higher Education, Vol. 31, No. 1: May 6, 2006

Author: Ann L. Wood

Location: http://0-web.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=4&hid=13&sid=acb735f1-5586-428e-8476-76d9c883b0cd%40sessionmgr8

Accessed: March 14, 2009

Support:

“Virginia’s standards make all students stars”, an article by Y. Thayer published in Educational Leadership journal
“Guard Dogs or Guide dogs? Adequacy vs. quality in the accreditation of teacher education”, an article by W. Dill published in the journal, Change
“NCATE Accreditation: Getting the most from the self-study”, an article by C. Coombs, C. Garn, and R. Allred published in Journal of Teacher Education

The first three citations, and the rest following, all provide insights as to what to expect during an accreditation examination, what a school can do to be successful throughout, and what problems have occurred.

Audience and Agenda: The proclaimed audience for the journal that published this article is the “faculty and administrators in the academic community. The manner in which the article itself was written supports this claim. The author, Wood, is not speaking to the general public, but specifically to those who would be on the receiving end of the accreditation process.

Usefulness: Although the article does present the idea that accreditation is not fully accepted as a valid form of improving the quality of high education, Wood ultimately supports the concept. That being said, the entire article details the charade of preparing for an accreditation exam and what a school must do to impress. The lengthy process and needless preparation seem to be comical. The concept that a school would go to such lengths to secure a seal of approval on a process that has yet to prove that accredited schools are superior in any way to a school without accreditation is astonishing. The article has an entire step devoted to developing multiple theories on how the standards of said accreditation agency could be interpreted. The ambiguity of accreditation standards has been a widespread critique, particularly in the case of the most popular accreditation agency, NCATE. Their standards are exceedingly vague and leave much to up to interpretation. The “pass rate” of each college on a particular standard varies greatly by how it is interpreted in each particular case. This source fails to acknowledge valid issues with its topic. The value in this article is that a reader can easily see in the steps of the process where the system of accreditation is at fault.

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