Accrediting Choice schools

The recent law raising the enrollment caps for the voucher program also requires that the schools be accredited. Clearly there was a need to have someone looking over the schools' shoulder and making sure they have the basics in place. Yet I had some skepticism about the accreditation approach. Based on my experience with university accreditation, I am not convinced that, as practiced, accreditation has much value to students. Typically the accreditation process involves a lot of effort and money for the institution and tends to push colleges towards a single dominant model.

I was pleased, then, to find that the legislation offers the schools a choice of accrediting agencies, from the conventional ones to two Milwaukee-based organizations, PAVE and Marquette's Institute for the Transformation of Learning, both experienced with both good and bad choice schools. A recent article quotes Howard Fuller of the ITL as saying that the emphasis will be on student achievement. A particular challenge will be how to evaluate start up schools with no record to judge achievement.

I think the legislation sets a nice balance between the need to weed out the schools born to fail and the desirability to avoid a single gatekeeper.