May 7, 2004 – The Good Hope School achieved at the end of last month what the territory's four public high schools hope to attain next fall: The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools recommended the St. Croix private school for continued accreditation.
Carole Everett, Good Hope acting head, struck a jubilant tone in a release sent out by the school. "Through all the planning we have done for this protocol and visit, we have a clear, shared vision for the future of this wonderful school," she said.
A team from Middle States was on the Good Hope campus April 27-29 as part of the school's 10-year reaccreditation process. According to Middle States' Web site, "Accreditation is the affirmation that a school provides a quality of education that the community has a right to expect and the education world endorses. Accreditation is a means of showing confidence in a school's performance."
Charlotte Amalie and Ivanna Eudora Kean high schools on St. Thomas and Central High School on St. Croix were notified in November 2001 that they had lost their Middle States accreditation. The fourth public high school, St. Croix's Education Complex, has never been accredited. All four are now "actively going through the self-study process toward accreditation," Education Department spokeswoman Juel Anderson said.
Some V.I. educators are looking forward to a visit from Middle States in the fall.
Terrence T. Joseph, St. Croix schools superintendent, said this week: "We are ready. We have done what is necessary."
William Frett, St. Thomas-St. John district superintendent, was unavailable for comment.
Good Hope has been accredited since 1972. The school "began preparing for this evaluation in 2001," according to the release. "For the past three years, every aspect of school life has been under scrutiny using the Middle States Pathways to Improvement protocol," it stated.
Megan Weary, third grade teacher and internal coordinator for accreditation, described the process as "a community-building experience that has given new vitality to the curriculum, extracurricular activities, as well as our internal organization."
Mildred Calvesbert, principal of Colegio Rosa-Bell in Puerto Rico, chaired the Middle States visiting committee. She told parents and school officials on the last day of the visit: "The Good Hope School is a special place, and we have felt the excitement generated by your community. After three days here, we leave feeling that we have had a full and rich experience."
Good Hope's faculty, Calvesbert said, "is a very dynamic, open, and committed group of diverse individuals who feel their work is a vocation and do it from the heart, putting in long hours to make good things happen."
Middle States is based in Philadelphia and accredits schools on the mainland and in the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Members of the Good Hope visiting team, whose task was to determine how well the school is realizing its goals of sustained academic excellence, came from Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and St. Croix.
Everett said the Middle States board of regents will make a final decision on the recommendation for reaccreditation in October.
Everett came to the school and to St. Croix last August. She said that soon after her arrival, "I started obsessing about the date of the visitation, on April 27. Now it's here and gone, and we are all so grateful to the visiting team for sharing their expertise, wisdom and time with us."
Some specific issues were addressed in relation to the accreditation process. "Already the school has reviewed graduation requirements for the future, increasing them in some areas," she said. And it has "integrated the curriculum across disciplines in many areas and made sure that technology is integrated in all subject areas."
According to the Middle States Web site, "The chief purpose of the whole accreditation process is the improvement of education for youth by evaluating the degree to which a school has attained worthwhile outcomes set by its own staff and community. This is accomplished by periodically conducting a comprehensive self-evaluation of the total school."
The Web site offers the following benefits of accreditation:
– Greater clarity of purpose.
– Stronger internal relationships.
– Wider professional participation.
– More effective methods of planning for school improvement.
– Improved consistency between educational purpose and practice.
And it adds that accreditation encourages school improvement.
Back Talk
Share your reaction to this news with other Source readers. Please include headline, your name, and the city and state/country or island where you reside.
Publisher's note : Like the St. Croix Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
