What is Accreditation?
Accreditation is an intensive, school-wide self-appraisal, analysis and improvement planning process. It allows CHA to have an external consultation that will review, validate and give us insights from a visiting peer group on what we are doing well and where we could improve as a school. The end result will be ongoing accountability with ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) for improvement through an annual reporting and renewal process. ACSI accredited schools are recognized nation-wide as having achieved a standard of excellence over and above the norm.
Why are we pursuing Accreditation?
The accreditation process encourages each school to continuously pursue excellence, which matches the Biblical directive of approving “things that are excellent” ~ Phil. 1:10. Accreditation denotes a school that has 1) met an institutional standard of quality and 2) verifies a commitment to strategic improvement and ongoing accountability.
What are the benefits of Accreditation?
-
It is an effective way for a Christian school to evaluate itself in light of its mission.
-
It sets up reflective and interactive dialog among the stakeholders of the school.
-
It positions the school to refine its strategic plan for student learning and organizationa effectiveness.
-
It validates the quality of the school’s program.
-
It verifies that the school is striving for excellence.
As a Christian school and as Christ followers, we bear the name of Christ. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth! ~ Psalm 8:1 We desire to reflect His name in the way we provide high-quality, Christ-centered education.
As you can imagine, there is a lot of work to do initially to prepare to go through the process. The staff needs extra professional workshop days to work on providing the documentation for what we do at CHA. We would love to include you in this exciting undertaking. If you would like to join an accreditation team (we have 10), it is not too late! If you would like to volunteer some time typing, collating or photocopying as we put together our documentation, your time and talents would be greatly appreciated! Our accreditation visit is scheduled for the end of February, so we will be working extra hard and long hours the first half of this school year preparing for our site visit.