Tallassee City Schools Receives Full Accreditation with Exemplary Review
Tallassee City Schools (TCS) recently went through its five-year accreditation review with a company called Cognia. Cognia is the latest iteration of what was formerly known as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).
TCS has received its final accreditation findings.
Why is being an accredited school so important? Why do we subject ourselves to a “test”? According to Cognia, accreditation is, “Based on a set of rigorous research-based standards and evidence-based criteria, the accreditation process examines the whole institution-its policies, programs, practices, learning conditions, and cultural context-to determine how well the parts work together to carry out the institution’s vision and meet the needs of every learner. Accreditation isn’t about passing a one-time inspection. Rather, accreditation recognizes education providers that demonstrate and sustain their commitments to continuous improvement and better learner outcomes.”
Looking more closely at the process, Cognia uses three learning domains in its review. These include 1) Leadership Capacity, 2) Learning Capacity, 3) Resource Capacity. Cognia notes, “The Domains are statements that define the capacity of an organization or institution to provide quality and meet the rigorous demands of continuous improvement. Each Domain is further defined by Standards.” For those more interested in the standards, please see the link below this article.
One of the most telling metrics from the report is the Cognia Improvement Network IEQ Range (CIN IEQ average) (see pg. 7-8 of report). This presents an average across all institutions reviewed by Cognia. The 5 Year average range is 278.34-283.33. Tallassee City Schools Index of Education Quality (IEQ) is 318.23!
As I noted in a previous article, I’d like to thank all of the TCS Board members, community members, staff, students, and business partners for their participation in this review.
See TCS Full Report linked below
https://www.tcschools.com/o/tallassee-city-schools/browse/203795
Cognia Standards:
https://www.cognia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/APS-Schools-Overview.pdf