Beech Tree News Network

The Butler County Board of Education met Wednesday, March 27th at a special called meeting to hear the recommendations of the AdvancEd External Review team.  The team from AdvancEd-formerly the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) -will be recommending the first ever district-wide accreditation for Butler County Schools.   This means that the system and all of its schools are accredited, and that Butler County Schools is recognized across the nation as a quality school system.  Superintendent Howard said he was asked on several occasions: Why accreditation?  Why now? “It demonstrates to our community our commitment to excellence, our openness to external review and feedback, and our desire to be the best we can on behalf of the students we serve.  The process enabled us to take a hard look at our purpose and direction.  We have met with stakeholders and have a renewed direction as we look at moving this next generation of students forward.”  “We are almost ready to unveil our revised purpose statements as well.  This has been a great growth process for our district.”
Three of the four individual schools had been accredited in the past and were due for their renewal.  So the district decided to include all schools in the process to uphold high quality standards from a globally recognized organization.  The district completed an in-depth self-assessment beginning August 2012 through surveys, program evaluations and documentation.  The review team from AdvancEd scoured over 500 documents, interviewed 35 parent and community members, 47 teachers/staff and administrators, and 31 students, and observed 24 classroom settings.  Lead evaluator, Dr. Debra Howe, superintendent from the Tri-creek School Corporation in Lowell, Indiana, stated that the district was well prepared and had done a good job at self-assessing and was glad to see that what the review team saw was closely matched. 
Howe stated in the exit report, Promising Practices strengths:  one- there was a great sense of community and culture of collaboration among the employees of the district, two-instructional time, material resources and fiscal resources are focused solely on supporting the purpose and direction of the system, its schools, educational program and system operations, three-Instructional time is fiercely protected in policy and practice at all schools.
The accreditation process is a process in which you are committing to always improving your schools capacity to bring a high quality education to students.  Therefore, it is imperative and mandated that the review team identify opportunities for growth.  These were no surprises and district administration was glad to see they are already working on the areas identified by the team and are already included in the district’s improvement plan.  One of the actions is to develop and implement a consistent evaluative process to monitor, review, revise and communicate feedback to the schools on student success relative to the district’s purpose and mission.  (Consistency being the key term.)  Another was to establish a common district process to monitor learning communities within each school that includes data based decision-making processes.  Yet another was to implement a system of communication among and between schools to align goals and help students transition to the next level.
 The assessment included 5 standards broken down into 35 indicators and were judged on a four point scale. A four indicated true for all cases, a three for most cases, a two for some cases and a one for rarely or never.  The review team gave Butler County  a rating of 2.25 on Purpose and Direction, a 2.74 on Governance and Leadership, a 2.56 on Resources and Support Systems, 2.19 on Teaching and Assessing for Learning, and a 2.10 on Using results for Continuous Improvement.
In essence, we want to have a system in place that ensures the programs in place are moving us to the next level.  Which ones are making the most impact, which ones are not?  Using student data and performance as the measuring stick in our classrooms on a daily basis and then looking at school-wide data and system-wide data to review, revise or delete those programs supporting student success.
The accreditation process was a monumental undertaking considering the initiatives that are being implemented across schools and across the state, but we hope that this process has validated the hard work our school system is doing and adhering to a set of rigorous standards to continue improvement. The new AdvancED Standards for Quality mark an evolution in continuous improvement and accreditation. While leveraging accreditation as a powerful tool for driving effective practices in support of student learning, these research-based Standards also emphasize teaching and learning; share embedded common themes across Standards; and address students' ability to successfully develop learning, thinking, and life skills as critical elements of student achievement.
We often compare ourselves to other school districts and when we look at those school districts across the state that are district accredited, we feel like we are in pretty good company.    We look to celebrate soon!
Accredited Public School Districts in Kentucky
Boone County School District    Kenton County School District
Bowling Green Independent School District    Laurel County School District
Boyd County Public Schools    Lee County School District
Butler County Schools    Ludlow Independent School District
Calloway County School District    Madison County School System
Campbell County School District    Marshall County Schools
Carlisle County Board of Education    McCracken County School District
Clark County Board of Education    Paris Independent School District   
Danville Independent School District    Pike County School District
Elizabethtown Independent School District    Rowan County School District
Fairview Independent School District    Russell Independent School District
Franklin County School District    Walton-Verona Independent School District
Garrard County School District    Williamstown Independent Schools
Graves County Schools   
Grayson County School District   
Henderson County School District   
Jefferson County Public Schools   
Jessamine County School District