Preston School District Accreditation Procedures

Preston School District determined in the fall of 2015 that the process of system accreditation offered through Advanc-Ed would help to achieve goals that district administration and school board members were seeking. After making the initial contact with Advanc-Ed personnel in Idaho and getting the authorization to begin, the district under the direction of the superintendent followed these procedures.

1. Administrative training for principals and superintendent from Advanc-Ed. This outlined the overall process and gave details on first steps (ie readiness reviews, etc). 2. Review of procedures with lead teachers and Preston Education Association leadership, conducted by the superintendent. 3. Creation of district accreditation team. Team consisted of all principals in the district as well as a teacher representative from each school. 4. Training of Accreditation team with Advanc-Ed personnel. 5. Self-Assessment explanation to entire district, including the creation of building level teams. Every certified member of the staff was required to be a part of a team that would focus on a specific standard in the self-evaluation process. 6. Self-Assessment of each school was completed over the space of two professional development days by teachers and paraprofessionals from each building. The building accreditation team members were responsible for compiling the information and writing the narratives for each self-assessment standard. 7. At the same time, surveys were being conducted. Staff surveys were required of teachers and voluntary for classified staff members (a process we will change in the future). Student surveys were conducted during the school day. Parent surveys were sent in multiple ways. District webpages and facebook pages were used to publicize the link. Prizes and drawings were instituted at parent-teacher conferences to encourage participation. District messaging service was used multiple times to encourage participation. 8. Evidences for each standard were also being collected simultaneously with the surveys and the self-assessment. Shared document files were developed at each building to collect the evidences. 9. When all self-assessment procedures had been completed district accreditation team members met over multiple days to create the system self-assessment using the information from the building self-assessments as a guide. 10. Student performance diagnostics and stakeholder feedback diagnostics were being completed concurrently.