education

First Approaches: Expertise and Consumer-Oriented Approaches 137 accreditation), site visits by a team of external experts, and the districts’ status being affected by the results (http://www.cde.state.co.us/index_accredit.htm). Informal Review Systems Many professional review systems have a structure and a set of procedural guide- lines, and use multiple reviewers. Yet some lack the published standards or speci- […]

Thus, accreditation is changing and is controversial. Like many evaluations in recent years, the accreditation of colleges and universities in the United States has moved to an increasing use of mixed methods and a greater focus on outcomes. Controversies concern the purpose of these expertise-oriented evaluations, the stakeholders they serve, the measures that should take

Neutrality, Transparency, and Purpose in Accreditation. Other criticisms of the current approach concern reviewers’ neutrality or objectivity and the trans- parency of the process. Evaluations are expected to be based on independent judg- ments. Such independence is intended to lead to more objective, and hence more valid, judgments of quality. Generally speaking, expertise-oriented evaluators should

Accreditation Controversies: Accreditation Politicized. So what can be contro- versial here? As one author defending the system notes, “Who better, one might ask, to evaluate the quality of a college or university than those who work in the field?” (O’Brien, 2009, p. 2). O’Brien argues that the evaluation and the relation- ship between the accrediting

The Process of Accreditation. In the first stage of accreditation, the institution prepares a self-study report describing its mission and its progress toward that mis- sion, as well as how the institution meets the standards of the accrediting body. The second major stage is the core of the expertise-oriented approach: a team of peers, faculty,

Accreditation in the United States is most common for institutions of higher education. 1 We will spend a little time describing this process because it has recently become quite political and controversial, and even for those readers not involved in accreditation, the arguments illustrate the types of political issues and choices that often arise in

Accreditation in Higher Education Today. Accreditation in the United States and in many other countries today meets our criteria for an expertise-oriented, formal review system. The systems make use of an existing structure (generally an inde- pendent regional or national accreditation organization in the United States or governmental agencies in other countries), standards published by

Formal Professional Review Systems: Accreditation Historical Foundations. To many, the most familiar formal professional review system is that of accreditation, the process whereby an organization grants approval of institutions such as schools, universities, and hospitals. Beginning in the late 1800s, regional accreditation agencies in the United States gradually supplanted the borrowed western European system of

Are published or explicit standards used as part of the review? 1. Is there an existing structure for conducting the review? 2. Are published or explicit standards used as part of the review? 3. Are reviews scheduled at specified intervals? 4. Does the review include opinions of multiple experts? 5. Do results of the review

The Expertise-Oriented Approach The expertise-oriented approach to evaluation is probably the oldest type of formal, public evaluation and, as its name implies, it relies primarily on professional expertise to judge the quality of an institution, program, product, or activity. For example, the merits of a leadership training program for school principals could be assessed by