Deer Isle
Report highlights from Island high school reaccreditation

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by Todd West, Principal,
Deer Isle-Stonington High School
As many in the community have been aware of for several months, Deer Isle-Stonington High School is undergoing its decennial reaccreditation by the New England Association of School and Colleges. Accreditation is a long journey, consisting of an 18-month self-study process followed by a four-day visit from an evaluation team which produces a report that is sent to NEASC’s Commission on Public Secondary Schools. It is the CPSS which ultimately determines a school’s continuing accreditation based on the visiting team’s report.

DISHS completed its self-study in August 2009 and hosted a visiting team in late October 2009. By all accounts, the visiting team had a productive and informative time in our school. I think our own faculty was pleasantly surprised by how much the re-accreditation process has improved in the last 10 years—some even referred to it as fun.

Earlier this month, DISHS received the final report of the visiting committee. The entire 100-page document has been posted in its entirety on the DISHS Web site and on the Island Ad-Vantages Web site (www.dishs.org and www.islandadvantages.com). Copies are also available in both the Deer Isle and Stonington town offices and libraries, as well as the DISHS library. See page 5 for an excerpt from the report.

The report provides an overview of our school and community as well as an evaluation of the extent to which DISHS is meeting the seven standards for accreditation. The report provides a narrative of the visiting team’s findings for each standard as well several commendations and recommendations. It should be noted that the visiting team did not reach any findings that were substantially different from those identified in our own self-study. This means that we are “walking our talk” and also honest about where we are falling short and in need of improvement. The report highlights the following strengths or commendations as well as challenges or recommendations.

Strengths and commendations

• The uniqueness of our Mission and Vision Statements in the sense that they were created by the entire community to describe how the school can educate citizens to sustain the community. Usually school mission statements are created solely by school staff and are not so clearly linked to the needs of a community.
• Our school-wide expectations. These were exemplary, both in the words of the chairman of the visiting team who said that they were the best he had seen in 15 accreditation visits, and also in the actions of the members of the team, each of whom asked to take their copy with them back to their own schools.
• The dedicated, caring, competent staff that is clearly committed to the education and well-being of our kids.
• The improvement in school climate, as measured by more respectful, responsible behavior of our student body.
• The implementation of meaningful Professional Learning Communities that are doing the real work of improving teaching and learning and are not just the educational “fad du jour.”

Challenges and recommendations

• The lack of a formal curriculum that is aligned to state and/or national standards, prescribes content, suggested instructional approaches, and identifies both formative and summative assessment strategies will be the #1 priority and will also most likely result in a six-month special progress report.
• The need for more technology in terms of access, infrastructure, and integration.
• The need for more professional time for teachers to collaborate on a variety of issues, but most clearly on curriculum development and technology integration.
• The need for a better plan to care for, maintain, and improve our building.
• The need to focus more on higher-order thinking skills in our instructional practices.

I am an ardent supporter of the NEASC accreditation process because I believe that it holds schools accountable for the sort of self-reflective, continuous improvement that results in a better education for students. I think that we provided the committee with a fair, honest, and appropriately critical look at our school, and the final report and commission are going to provide us with a mandate to address our weaknesses.

We had already planned to address our curricular deficiencies before the visiting team arrived; in fact, we have been looking into possible tools that we could use to help us utilize technology to make the process of developing curricula more efficient and effective. At the very least, the high school is going to have to dedicate significant professional time over the 2010-2013 school years to develop curricula in all content areas. This will be a major undertaking (much like writing the self-study and creating the school-wide expectations) that will take time, money, and support. However, it is a real need and all of that time, money, and energy will be well spent.

Two of the other recommendations of the committee will be important for the high school to consider immediately. One is the technology recommendation. More than anything that I could provide you with, the report will be providing us with a strong incentive to go to 1:1 computing at the high school in the near future. Second, the recommendation to provide more professional time is yet another reason that a Friday early release for professional learning communities would be beneficial to the high school. If we can make headway on recommendations like technology and time for professional collaboration before the commission even votes on our continuing accreditation, it might make the special progress report for curriculum a little easier to swallow and also show that we are indeed proactive in addressing our needs.

From here, the next step in the process is for the Commission on Public Secondary Schools to vote on our continuing accreditation at its quarterly meeting in March. We will most likely have to submit a special six-month progress report to show that we addressing the deficiencies in the curriculum report by January of 2011 as well as a regular two-year progress report in which we will need to identify both how we plan to address all of the recommendations in the report as well as provide evidence that we have already made progress on highlighted recommendations like technology, professional development, and building maintenance. Finally, we will need to submit a five-year progress report showing completion of all of the recommendations in the report. Then, we get a nice three-year break before the entire process starts again.

If you have any questions about the accreditation report or would like more information, do not hesitate to call me at 348-2303 or e-mail me at toddwest@dishs.org.

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