Elementary school accreditation in a Midwest urban archdiocese.

Abstract

This dissertation examined the widespread assumption among professional educators that accreditation processes play an important role in school improvement. In order to examine this assumption, I studied how a new accreditation process designed for use by Catholic elementary schools was implemented in 11 Catholic schools in a midwestern state. The schools' activities as they pursued accreditation were studied in order to better understand: (1) the reasons these particular elementary schools chose to enter into the accreditation process, (2) the role the principal played in the process, (3) how the accreditation process was implemented, (4) the effects of the accreditation process on staff in the school, and (5) the outcomes of the process as perceived by the participants. The purpose of the study was to ascertain whether the accreditation process led to school improvement in the 11 Catholic elementary schools studied, where school improvement was defined broadly as both a thorough evaluation of the school's performance on central aspects of its mission and as changes in various structures and processes that support organizational health and improvement. The central finding of this dissertation was that all of the 11 schools studied engaged in school improvement as defined in this study. Thus, in all 11 schools, careful attention was paid to the instructional mission of the school, and although each school addressed the instructional mission in different ways, all schools appeared to devote careful attention to their instructional mission, to an assessment of how well it was being achieved, and to plans for improving instructional performance. Each of the 11 schools studied here also appeared to make important changes in organizational processes thought to promote long-term organizational health and survival. All schools developed a long-range planning cycle, developed new strategies of resource acquisition, and experienced improved patterns of communication and problem-solving as a result of engaging in the self-study process.