| The Schechter Saga, Book 2, Chapter 5 | for everyone |
So we've just finished the private school accreditation process (ISACS, which stands for Independent Schools Association of the Central States), kind of like MSIP (MIssouri School Improvement Plan/Program, whatever) without the threat level. Not that there wasn't pressure, but clearly some staff felt it more than others.
I can't believe there's any danger of our losing accreditation, although obviously a positive report helps marketing more than a negative one. That's a huge difference between the public and private school worlds. For better and, some would say, worse, public schools do have close to a monopoly on their student population and don't have to "compete" in the same way private schools do, at least not in the less wealthy neighborhoods. (As the middle class continues to shrink, however, the number of those neighborhoods and the number of non-affluent in the remaining havens are both rising.) In any case, marketing was never really an issue in my previous life. Whether it should be (and how much time, energy and money should be allocated to that process) is topic for another day.
According to some SSDS veterans, several of the recommendations in this report will be no different than those of seven years ago. Like their public school brethren, private school problems are often ongoing and of longstanding. What I found most interesting in the whole process, however, is another key similarity between public and private school evaluations. In both cases we spend so much time trying to prove how good a job we're doing that it interferes with actually doing a good job.
People's time and energy are finite. Teachers can use that finite time and energy in actually doing their job or in trying to demonstrate to strangers how good a job they're doing. Focusing on the latter often gets in the way of the former. As I've noted on numerous occasions, the old Michelob Light commercials perpetuated a fraud: "You can't have it all."
That being said, I do recognize that without organized self-examination, progress is often haphazard and random, at best. The value of the ISACS (or any other) accreditation process will be seen in the years to come and depend to a great extent on how much time and energy is allotted to actually implementing the recommendations of the committee. Whatever problems Schechter may have (and there are no schools without problems, although some have superior PR people), they didn't start this year and they won't be fixed with a 3-day in-service at the beginning of the next school year.
Closing on that subject, I'll have news soon as to my assignment next year as the politics sorts itself out. Sadly, my protective bubble of local political ignorance has been compromised; I now know more than I care to.
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