Blair Accreditation Process Underway

Blair Academy welcomed five educators from throughout the region to serve as the School’s Middle States Commission validation team. From April 11 through April 14, these five volunteers took part in life at Blair Academy, speaking with a large number of community members and reviewing Blair’s recently completed self-study. In particular, the volunteers focused on two new initiatives to come out of this accreditation self-study, namely, public speaking and student leadership.

Blair is accredited every seven years. A description of the process is taken from the Middle States Commission’s website, as follows: Accreditation is the affirmation that a school provides a quality of education that the community has a right to expect and the education world endorses. Accreditation is a means of showing confidence in a school’s performance. When the Commission on Secondary Schools accredits a school, it certifies that the school has met the prescribed qualitative standards of the Middle States Association within the terms of the school’s own stated philosophy and objectives.

The website also notes: The chief purpose of the whole accreditation process is the improvement of education for youth by evaluating the degree to which a school has attained worthwhile outcomes set by its own staff and community. This is accomplished by periodically conducting a comprehensive self-evaluation of the total school. Through the accreditation process, the school seeks the validation of its self-evaluation by obtaining professional judgement from impartial outsiders on the effectiveness of the total school operation. The intent throughout the process is more than to focus on shortcomings; the chief goal is to seek remedies for inadequacies and to identify and nurture good practices.

Posted 4/8/2011

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