School Accreditation?

The accreditation field is dominated by established firms and may seem like a difficult one to break into. 

1. What is school accreditation? 
2. Why pursue the development of a school accreditation model? 
3. What value would a holistic school accreditation model add to K-12 education more broadly? 
4. How would school accreditation model differ from other models?

1. What is school accreditation?

School accreditation is the process by which a school is recognized by a third party organization (usually an association of like-minded schools) for accomplishing goals that it both implicitly and explicitly promises to accomplish. 

All schools implicitly promise to be sustainable institutions and to provide an environment that is safe for the children they serve. 

Accreditation systems should be able to assist parents and other societal stakeholders in education to assess whether a given school is living up to the important promises that the school represents in the lives of children and their families.

Some schools promise to produce academic outcomes such as grades, test scores, graduation rates, and college entrance rates. 

Other schools reject some or all of these academic measures as valid measures of the value they provide to the children they serve. 

An accreditation system that inherently defers to academics cannot serve the needs of stakeholders whose interest is in schools that reject academics as central measures of their value as a school. 

2. Why pursue the development of a school accreditation model?

I have long been a part of both the democratic school and the homeschool movements. 

I understand from conversations with leaders in the democratic school movement that there has been periodic lamentation of the fact that all the existing mainstream accreditation systems fail to recognize important non-academic features of democratic and other types of holistic schools and that they tend to effectively (though not explicitly) impose inappropriate expectations upon them. 

One attempt at an alternative accreditation model was intended to accommodate all the diverse needs of the various schools, but was inadequate since some of its “accredited” schools were deemed “diploma mills” by the US department of Education, meaning that the diplomas they issued would not be recognized as valid by colleges and universities. 

Knowledgeable insiders confided in me that that particular accreditation model appeared to them to be an effort to address the marketing advantage of being accredited, without providing the necessary substance. 

In the process of completing my thesis research studying two distinctly different private alternative schools in Oregon,

I noticed that there were two nearby charter schools that closely paralleled those in his study. 

Both matched pairs of schools were founded within a few years of each other with similar philosophies and operational characteristics and all had close to a decade of successful operations behind them. 

The differences between the matched pairs that have emerged would appear to be primarily due to the private/public choices that they each made at critical moments in their histories. 

In one set of matched pairs both had been publicly funded alternative schools within their respective districts, but after a few years the districts were pressuring them to alter key characteristics of their models.

One chose to become private while the other chose to become a charter. In both sets of matched pairs the charter schools have been forced to compromise. 

Charters, at least in Oregon, currently do not have the freedom to operate in accordance with the kinds of philosophies that make holistic alternatives unique. 

To be honest, it is still technically an open question whether those particular compromises have diminished their ability to nurture the children in their care, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they have been compromised in this regard. 

In any case, these specific examples make it clear that developing a third party method of evaluating these schools in a manner that honors their unique character would provide the evidence needed to answer these questions. 

It is in the context of these two perceived gaps, in school needs and objective data, that I believe there is an important opportunity that should be uniquely served by a new model of accreditation. 

As an independent scholar, I have been focused for decades on the question of how to ground holistic education in an appropriate framework that draws on the scientific evidence in the emerging fields of complex adaptive systems, cognitive psychology, and ecological sustainability. 

3. What value would a holistic school accreditation model add to K-12 education more broadly? 

A holistic accreditation model that is grounded in scientifically respectable terms would bridge the gap between holistic education and mainstream education. As I envision it, in the beginning, the model would be an experiment involving a self-selected group of 10-20 schools to recognize their organizational strengths as nurturing schools, build their nurturing capacity, and create a branded third party system that can become independent and eventually be recognized as a legitimate accrediting body. 

In the mid-term the model would provide schools that aspire to holism a method of verifying the legitimacy of their efforts and begin to build a political foundation for protecting the features of holistic schools that are threatened by the emphasis on traditional academic outcomes in publicly funded schools. 

In the long-term the holistic accreditation system may become a full parallel to the traditional academic accreditation systems or it may be integrated into the traditional accreditation system. 

As currently envisioned, there is no inherent incompatibility between holistic and traditional schooling. 

The problem arises when academics are given precedence over holism. 

When academic performance is used as a mechanism of behavioral control, then that commitment can cause more psychologically harmful controlling behaviors to arise. 

If the goals of holism are recognized as necessary prerequisites to academic goals, then the incompatibility will not arise, or can be effectively corrected. 

This accreditation model approach is the most likely way that holistic schools can have a far-reaching systemic effect on the way that mainstream schooling operates. 

The dominant non-state players in the accreditation field are the various regional Associations of Independent Schools and AdvancED, an accreditation conglomerate. 

The regional independent school associations are explicitly focused on academics with some minor acknowledgement that social/emotional skills are necessary. 

AdvancED is the dominant accreditation organization overall and they are also focused primarily on academics. Holism has no role in any of the existing accreditation systems.

4. How would school accreditation model differ from other models?

This accreditation model would be unique because of the holistic conceptual framework upon which it will be developed. 

The consistent emphasis on how systems are embodied by and embedded in other systems in this framework is the essence of a holistic approach. 

The conceptual framework provides a skeleton that will lend coherence to the diverse array of practices that flesh out the actual operations of each school. 

The conceptual framework has three core components. 

1. Quality of Individual Experiences
   An examination of how the individuals within the school experience their activities there.
   
   The data gathered about individual experiences will use established scientifically respected frameworks regarding motivation and engagement.
   
   Patterns of motivation and engagement will serve as the foundation of the accreditation decision. The maintenance of intrinsic motivation and/or high levels of engagement will be required along with indications of positive school climate.
   
   If less than ideal conditions are observed in the motivation and engagement data then activities that regularly occur in the school will be viewed critically from three important perspectives: the learning agent (e.g. students, teachers, & principals) , the learning catalyst (e.g. teachers & principals), and the learning context (e.g. principals & societal stakeholders).
2. Commitment to Sustainability
   The well-established and successful ecological sustainability model, the Natural Step, is based on the fact that global ecological reality inherently imposes four very specific limitations that define sustainability.
   
   The sustainability component of our accreditation model is a holistic expansion of the Natural Step.
   
   Sustainability is determined by the behaviors of multiple levels of systems that are both embodied by and embedded in other systems.
   
   For instance, an organization behaves through the actions of individuals even as the organization is part of society and the individual is made up of cells.
   
   All the behaviors at the cellular, individual, organizational, and societal levels interact with the ecological level described in the Natural Step.
   
   Schools will be required to develop transparent communications with their stakeholders regarding how they address the various levels of sustainability.
3. Organizational Activism
   A systematic design approach to articulating how the school intends to fulfill their role as a part of the larger education system in which it is embedded.
   
   Schools must both fit into and positively affect the society in which they are embedded.
   
   This accreditation system will require accredited schools to participate in the policy conversations at state, federal, and global levels that shape the limitations on how they can and should operate.
   
   Currently that conversation effectively excludes holism, but that can and should change.
   
   It will only change if schools take responsibility for changing it and cooperate on actions to make the change happen..

The school accreditation model will be developed in cooperation with a core group of schools that are members and with additional financial support from other organizations, including other schools that want to invest in K-12 educational innovation that takes holism seriously. 

R&D Proposal

Currently the concept of psychological energy management does not exist in our school system, nor in most of our society.* For K-12 there is a variety of data going back decades showing that a significant amount of energy has been wasted through patterns of diminishing motivation and engagement, but we have nothing in place to substantively change that pattern.

It is time to manage how psychological energy is generated and used in schools. Like a race car driver, we need to know not only our position on the course (e.g. academics), we also need to know how much energy we have available to complete the race (e.g. motivation & engagement). Using the well-established theoretical framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) we can talk productively about how psychological energy is generated, allocated, and used. Psychological energy is generated when primary psychological needs are met. Allocation (a.k.a. motivation) determines how much energy we will invest in the available activities. Energy use (a.k.a. engagement) is how efficiently we burn the energy as we participate in the activities. This project would create methods of tracking and influencing how well energy is being generated, allocated, and used in schools and the impacts that the observed patterns have on valued outcomes. 

The management of systems requires good feedback. The reason we are currently failing at the larger systems-level of schooling is that the wrong feedback is getting our attention. Our schools are novices when it comes to executive functions and, more importantly, the deeper learning processes that will positively affect executive functions. Success requires expertise. The relevant form of organizational expression of expertise is when cultural patterns automatically incorporate a function without the designation of a role to manage it. Successful business organizations do not need a Vice President of Profit because the function of producing a profit is automatically fulfilled by the organization as a whole. Schools need to automatically fulfill the function of producing deeper learning.

The difference between a novice and an expert is that the expert has become habituated to attending to multiple streams of feedback in automatic, non-conscious ways. Humans can only become true experts by switching their cognitive functions to fast automatic processes informed by good feedback. The critical phrase in that last sentence was “good feedback.” This is where schools have failed. They are not getting good feedback about how to develop deeper learning. Right now we need to pay attention to the motivation and engagement of students and teachers, the psychological conditions that facilitate deeper learning which will also improve executive functions.

The feedback issue is not about the quality of information, it is about which information is needed. By analogy consider a 1984 Chevy Corvette, a classic muscle car. I was just a sophomore in high school when it came out and it became an object of envy when a family friend bought one. Specifically, consider the driver's instrument panel in front of the steering wheel (see attachment). It consists of three boxes with the speedometer and tachometer being the largest displays. What would happen if they left out the fuel gauge in the center? Obviously, that would be a big problem. It is only “obvious” because we are so used to having and using fuel gauges. If gas-fueled cars had never had them, we would think that tracking fuel consumption through the clever use of odometers and purchase records was fine.

Our school systems have been keeping track of academic outcomes forever and we accept that as normal, but that is only because we didn't previously know how to create any other kind of “gauge” for learning. Focusing on academics is like a driver focusing only on the speedometer and the tachometer to the neglect of the gas gauge. If prominence of display is any indication, for the driver of a Corvette the car's overland speed and the engine's rotational speed are the most important information. Despite its size the fuel gauge is crucial because having no fuel defeats the entire enterprise. Given that humans are not closed systems with regards to the “fuel” for learning we do not always run the tank dry. But the consistent and robust pattern of disengagement observed in schools and later in the workplace (reported for decades by both Gallup and a variety of psychological researchers) suggests that we are very poorly managing the “fuel” levels of students and teachers.

We humans are energy systems, not content systems. The basic design of mainstream schooling treats us as content systems. We need to stop managing the system as if the delivery, storage, and accounting of content were enough. We need a more direct gauge of learning. We need to start considering how energy flows at different levels of scale within our systems of schooling. Academic outcomes are like overland speed; they are important, but if you don't attend to the sources of the energy that make the whole thing work, you defeat your ultimate purpose. Fueling up a race car is not a highlight of racing, but without it there is no race. Motivation and engagement are how we attend to the “fueling” of the learning process. They are not the sexy bits, but they are the bits that make it all happen. It is time to take them seriously and figure out how to gauge the burning of psychological energy in schools.

The R&D focus of this project is the management of motivation and engagement. Based on the long established theoretical framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) it is clear that the leverage point for change is the systematic improvement of primary psychological need supports. Here is a simplified causal model derived from SDT:

Need Supports → Needs Satisfied → Good Quality of Motivation → Deep Engagement → Deep Learning (including executive function development)→ Better Observed Outcomes

Need Thwarting → Needs Unsatisfied → Poor Quality of Motivation → Shallow Engagement → Shallow Learning (including executive function stagnation)→ Worse Observed Outcomes

There are some radically different school models that have scientific data suggesting that they defy the mainstream pattern of declining motivation and engagement. But, those models are mostly on the fringes (like EdVisions, which has received some Gates support). They hold out great promise as potential sources of innovation, but only if the organizational strengths that support motivation and engagement are valued and preserved. Also, their tendency to de-emphasize academics needs to be considered in light of the psychological advantages that may be conferred by that unusual pedagogical commitment.

-- The preceding proposal is a draft that I am planning on submitting to the Chan-Zuckerberg/ Gates request for information about potential research and development projects.

* Energy management as a success strategy was first presented in the best-selling business book The Power of Full Engagementby Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.

A Perennial Education Debate

As John Dewey put it in 1938, “The history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that education is development from within and that it is formation from without: that it is based upon natural endowments [versus] a process of overcoming natural inclination and substituting in its place habits acquired under external pressure.” (p.1)

When Self-Determination Theory co-founder Richard Ryan teamed up with fellow psychologist Martin Lynch in 2003 to examine this age-old controversy in light of research they set the stage thus:

“Views on autonomy and control in education are strongly connected with answers to some prior questions. If one assumes humans are naturally inclined to learn, allowing students to learn autonomously makes sense. However, if it is assumed that students are inherently unmotivated or disinclined, then control is more readily justified. If one believes that society depends on the specific body of knowledge or skills that must be disseminated, or character traits that must be inculcated, then using force to compel learning might be in order. However, if one assumes that useful knowledge takes many forms and is ever-changing, then controlling what must be learned makes less sense. Similarly, if one’s goal is not obedience but moral autonomy, one will be less concerned with control, though one may regard moral autonomy as the ultimate goal while holding that some degree of control must be exercised in preparing children for later autonomy. Philosophers' views of the matter have divided especially around the matter of what motives are spontaneously present in children and whether control is helpful or unhelpful in educating children for autonomy.” (p.263)

They found that, “the use of external controls to motivate students is often associated with a distrust of human nature that assumes students will not absorb, and teachers will not teach, what is essential unless strongly guided to do so through external controls. By contrast, the advocacy of autonomous learning depends on a view of humans as inherently desiring to know and disposed to assimilate ambient social values and knowledge, whenever they are properly cared for. … [A] teachers philosophy of education and motivation readily results in a self-fulfilling prophecy.” (p.269-70)

The conservative fear that an education lacking structure could lead to poor results is well founded. The progressive fear that an education characterized by too much control could lead to poor results is also well founded. These fears result in pedagogues and policy makers fighting over how much control to impose (the currently dominant view in mainstream schools) versus how much freedom to impose (a marginal but growing segment of the industry). These reactions are understandable given those fears.

The problem arises from how actions taken in response to these fears are applied in a manner that undermines the psychological foundations of deep learning. I suspect that everyone would agree that deeper learning is the desired result (at least for their own children). I take it as a basic tenet of fairness that the same psychological conditions need to apply for all children, since the aspect of psychology I am concerned with is universal, not culturally contingent. Therefore, I contend that we psychologists do not need to take sides in the pedagogical debate, we need to ensure that the psychological foundations are universally solid and then let the pedagogues work it out amongst themselves.

If conservative pedagogues want to offer a standardized test-driven curriculum then they should be free to do so, as long as they are able to show that they maintain the psychological conditions that are necessary for deeper learning of that curriculum. They would need to show that their students and teachers maintain their intrinsic motivation and engagement for the typical activities of schooling. If the intrinsic motivation and engagement of students diminish over time then they need to figure out how to do their thing in a manner that maintains those psychological conditions for deeper learning.

The same is true of the progressive educators pedagogues who are inclined to impose freedom. If they can show that their students and teachers are maintaining their intrinsic motivation and engagement for the typical activities of schooling then they are doing fine.

Given the psychological research I've seen so far I suspect the conservative pedagogues will have more difficulties with this kind of accountability, but that might not be the case over the long term. They might figure out how to do it. They have the advantage of being closer to the default image of schooling in most people's minds. They just have to figure out how to get that institutional arrangement to work in terms of motivation and engagement. The point is to eliminate the abuses of power that can go with the structures they favor.

The same elimination of abuses of power is crucial to the long term success of the progressive pedagogies that make freedom their raison d'être. In the past this side of the pedagogical spectrum has tended to equate structure with a lack of freedom and conclude that freedom requires a lack of structure. Psychological research has shown that this attitude was in error. Their challenge will be figuring out which kinds of structure are the most useful for achieving their goals and getting the use of those structures to become a commonly accepted image of schooling.