Steps we can handle, iterations, aspirations … a staircase in the Katholische Pfarrkirche Herz Jesu, Goldau, Switzerland.

Schools are accredited from time to time sort of like finances of businesses are verified in an audit: An outside agency takes a look at things, identifies lots of good practices and notes some things that could use attention, and then lets the organization get on with it. Oversimplified, but that’s the general idea.

Being accredited can then be a selling point for the school. An outside agency, after all, has put its stamp of approval on the school. The logo from the agency is likely to be found later somewhere on the web page, news of the accreditation will be in a letter to parents. Since there are multiple accrediting agencies, however, I’m guessing there is also a bit of pressure for accrediting agencies to make sure the process has a clear value-add for the school. And because we’re talking about education, I’m wagering that accreditation agencies are informed by a good dose of altruism, too, that they are doing their best to support schools to deliver the safest and best possible learning experience to their students. I am by no means a scholar of accreditation, this is just my impression.

The particular accreditation visit I participated in recently, using the ACE protocol of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) is very focused on supporting school improvement, and unlike an accreditation protocol I was familiar with ten years ago, ACE takes a clear stance about the type of educational experience it supports. This is refreshing and daring. The process is supported by highly experienced and competent educators at NEASC and many hundreds of volunteers who are willing to travel and spend time at schools as visiting team members. 

ACE is about student self-direction, exploration, agency, and learning to learn. It is about cultivating skills like collaboration, leadership, (followership!), useful skepticism, and motivation. This is the stuff of school that transfers very well to many areas of being human, to being successful. I am fully behind the goals of ACE. Their goals are for me – and for many – the future of education, no matter how uncertain the path to get there.

So I’m letting myself think aloud a bit about how best to accomplish the goals that ACE sets out to support. Perhaps despite the naivete on my part, both new and experienced accreditors, as well as anyone interested in pushing forward with school reform, can find here a few interesting ideas to explore.

The process

Schools working with ACE first satisfy what NEASC calls the foundation standards: things like basic organizational structures, safety, finance, and ethical practices. After these are demonstrated and verified by educators representing NEASC, the school is given the green light to work specifically on how it plans to further its capacity to create and maintain a healthy learning environment. There are ten learning principles that guide schools as they review their current practices in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional learning as well as the school climate, the physical environment, and the leadership supporting all of these areas. The actual review and establishment of plans to address self-identified weaknesses (or further bolster perceived strengths) might take place over a year or longer, at the end of which another set of educators representing NEASC arrives at the school to provide the external perspective on the school’s progress and plans.

The recommended process involves everyone at the school. A few individuals generally coordinate this effort by creating multiple committees which then meet to plan and to pull together evidence for a report, which is sent to NEASC to share with the educators who will spend time at the school. The visitors supplement what they have learned in the written report through observations and meetings, after which they make a recommendation to NEASC to accredit the school or not (or accredit the school given that the school addresses those issues that the visitors deem important to address). The final accreditation decision lies with the NEASC board itself.

An alternative

Once the foundation standards are met, the rest of the process is about attaining the central cultural shift that ACE proposes, which is moving the school from its current state to a position with greater student autonomy, student choice, student agency … all those factors which together form our notion of 21st century learning (see e.g. Partnership for 21st Century Learning and the four Cs). As I heard one highly experienced school visitor put it, schools are being asked to make a shift toward the mindset that content is not the end goal, but rather serves as the vehicle with which students practice skills. This is a significant shift, since it is content ability that is overwhelmingly accepted as the purpose of school. If there is any doubt, consider what is routinely measured and reported to parents and universities. 

Because what is being asked for is a cultural shift toward more progressive teaching, it seems like a school would be well served by immediately getting to work with examples of progressive teaching. Instead of focusing on the planning, in committees, to create a report that explains how the school will move toward progressive teaching, why not start by supporting more progressive teaching? Have a small and nimble plan with lots of actual progressive teaching playing out across the school. Learn from that progressive teaching in order to create further examples. Learning through action, not talk; learning by emphasizing execution, not planning.

I imagine a process like this:

A school has satisfied the foundation standards. There are no significant worries about how the school operates. The work now is to support progressive teaching and learning, above all a  strengthening of student agency. 

STEP 1. Use a participatory approach (or approaches) to identify examples of curriculum, instruction, and assessment that teachers feel is heading in the direction of greater student agency. The identification process itself is a good manner in which to define the current state of thinking and practice in the school. The emphasis on collectively identifying assets is uplifting and respectful to the professionals who work in the school.

STEP 2. Use a participatory approach (or approaches) to create an aspirational list of possible work in curriculum, instruction, and assessment, prioritized by faculty according to relevance and doability. Value all ideas, but allow for a prioritization of the ideas by which seem most likely to be productive, are small enough in scope to get started and see growth soon, and which have support from many individuals.

STEP 3. Create two principal avenues for advancing the prioritized work, with a strong emphasis on trying things out and having time for faculty members to share with each other, debrief results, and simply talk about the work.

1. Work on initiatives with the support of small working groups, formed when faculty volunteer for the prioritized items from Step 2, that support experimentation in each individual’s daily working context at the school. For example, if one of the prioritized items was non-traditional assessment, which attracted five teachers into a single working group, set the five of them loose to experiment with student presentations, fairs, peer feedback, portfolios, podcasts … whatever works for teachers in their contexts, given their strengths and comfort levels. There are two roles for the administrator. First, demonstrate that teachers can experiment safely, that experimentation is valued. Second, provide teachers various opportunities to share with each other about what they are doing. See Justin Reich (this EdSurge podcast, for example) for a clear discussion of why this is so important.

2. Support your most committed and gungho teachers in their work on an individual passion project the teacher is wholly committed to (and likely already doing, though you might not know it unless it came out in your whole faculty discussion of existing assets). Like with the small groups, demonstrate to those teachers that their experimentation is valued and safe and give them venues to share their ideas with others. Hear how they would like to be supported in their work and how they would most like to share their work with others. Then help make that happen.

That’s it, at least to get started. In many cases the role of an administrator is going to be akin to the parent at the neighborhood playground who helps out at the swingset by giving an occasional push. Provide a boost from time to time by showing interest in what teachers are doing. Build networks by connecting teachers with others who are working in similar areas, inside and outside the school. Invest in a book or share a podcast or online training that is relevant. It does not take much. It isn’t stressful. And the work is based in work already happening, in the teacher’s context.

From time to time one would want to go back to Step 1 to take stock of where the school is, revisiting Step 2 to re-prioritize now that the school has advanced and changed. Then head back into a new cycle of Step 3. The second time around will be easier, as will the third time and beyond. There will be a growing culture of focusing on assets, trying things out, and talking about change and improvement.

The added value of an approach like this

What I am proposing is that the work in a school emphasize 

• doing first, before talking; and
• experimenting first, before planning, in iterations small enough that the difference between experimenting and planning are quite blurred.

To recap: After making sure the basics are covered (meeting the foundation standards in the NEASC’s ACE process), I would be really interested to see what would happen if schools were to immediately jump into teacher action that seems likely to nudge school culture toward the ACE goal of greater student agency. We’d have to make sure that there is time to talk about how these initiatives are going, informally and often, between teachers. We would keep the process moving through the shared interest in the learning as opposed to committee meeting times and reporting requirements. We would be demonstrating, I guess you might say, that our school is a learning organization by being one. 

We would learn what the next right steps are after the work is underway, not beforehand. After all, before we start a new initiative, we know the least about how it is going to play out. That probably isn’t the best time to invest too heavily in a big plan. Once we have started, however, when we have some experience under our belts and know more about what we are doing, planning will be informed by recent experience and therefore more helpful.

To round out the external accreditation process, a visiting team from NEASC could still spend time at the school, either virtually or in person. Their emphasis would be similar to existing practice, namely, seeing that the school is committed to student agency and making progress in that direction. Teachers could present their work, teachers could invite visitors to their classes to see what they have been working on. The visitors would be seeing the school as a learning organization in action. This is a big part of the continual improvement process ACE is meant to support.

I’m thinking that perhaps the current ACE process allows for this action research oriented approach already. Are any of you already handling your work with the ACE principles this way?