The recent downgrading of Osbourn High School (OHS) from Fully Accredited to Provisionally Accredited by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) has recently triggered concern and some anger among OHS parents and the larger Manassas citizenry. Some parents worry about how it might reflect on their child's diploma if they graduated from a high school that was not fully accredited. Would it hurt their college prospects, their job prospects?
Well, if we are to take at face value the recent news release from the MCPS it appears that the school board and school system has just wiped away the blemish from Osbourn's good name. They brought in an outside private accreditation service AdvancED and voilà, Osbourn and the entire Division is once again fully accredited.
The benefits?
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“Accreditation through AdvancED has so many benefits for our students,” says Dr. Gail Pope, division superintendent. “It reinforces our commitment to raising student performance and accountability and it opens the door for students to have greater access to federal loans, scholarships, post-education and military programs that require students attend an accredited institution.”
How can one argue against opening doors for our students? Of course, some people might ask: Were the doors closed by the absence of full accreditation? Nevertheless, perhaps some even more interesting questions to raise about this new acclamation of accreditation is: How much did it cost? How much will it continue to cost? And just when did the school system decide to acquire it?
Find out what's happening in Manassasfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The AdvancED Quality Assurance Review Team (QAR), which accredited the school division was especially impressed with the governance and leadership of the school system, rating it Highly Functional, a rating of which is rarely given according to the Chairman of QAR team, Dr. Drew Moore. In other words, it appears that the people who brought in AdvancED have been found to be Highly Functional in their vision and improvements efforts according to AdvancED. Highly functional, indeed.
A cynical observer might ask: Did we as a city just run to an Accreditation Mill? But as a simple observer of the controversy swirling around Manassas schools within the community, I would simply ask : Just who did AdvancED Quality Assurance Review Team speak with among the system's stakeholders?
And if privatized accreditation is a good thing, maybe privatizing the schools would be for the greater good as well?
