Accreditation

What is Accreditation?

Accreditation is a voluntary method of quality assurance developed more than 100 years ago by American universities and secondary schools, and designed primarily to distinguish schools adhering to a set of educational standards.

Who is AdvancEd?

AdvancEd is a US based non-profit organization catering to education standards for over 100 years. 30,000 + institutions all over the world got accredited via AdvancEd catering to over 17 Million students. This is the only Accreditation body cater to all the 50 states of US.  

Why AdvancEd was chosen for ATA and Tamil School Accreditation?

State level Education board accreditation which stipulates their own standards and evaluation process specific to state level is not a repeatable process all over US. Every state standard varies and also the requirements and documentation, it involve enormous amount of time for each state level accreditation to prepare for themselves.

AdvancEd has universal acceptance and stipulates the same 5 Standards and 32 Indicators all over the world which is repeatable in all the 50 US states. By following ATA Syllabus and process (ATA LMS (Learning Management System), 3 semesters, HW grading, common gradebook etc.) every willing participating schools can jump onto Accreditation by adopting the specified standards for Accreditation by ATA, can quickly apply for accreditation and audit by AdvancEd.

What is the current status of the Accreditation efforts by ATA and few participating Schools?

ATA has implemented a LMS (Learning Management Software) software in Feb 2013 for effective management of Students and school as prototype. 2 schools were currently started using the LMS, they are Minnesota, Missouri.

Can AdvancEd Accredit weekend Language Schools?

Yes, AdvancEd already accredited Language schools like Hebrew Academy at NC, Sanskrit Institute at Ahmedabad-India are the few examples. ATA office bearers Dr.Arasu, Sivanandam & Ravi Palaniappan attended the 2 day training at Atlanta with AdvancEd in Jan 2012 and it was validated by AdvancEd that we could get accredited as a secondary school program for Language education.

Why Does Accreditation Matter?

Accreditation is designed to help educational institutions boost their ongoing performance efforts for the benefit of their students. AdvancED insists on a relentless pursuit of excellence – for itself and for the institutions it accredits. This ethic of excellence ensures that institutions will find rich benefits from accreditation and that parents can confidently make informed decisions about their children’s education, knowing their child’s school is accredited. Accreditation matters because our students deserve the highest level of educational excellence possible.

Educational institutions that engage in AdvancED Accreditation will:

  • Earn the distinction of quality through the recognized seal of AdvancED accreditation.
  • Experience a unified, clear, and powerful accreditation process with a scalable and sustainable evaluation of education quality.
  • Receive external and objective validation of the areas in which they’re doing well, and the areas for continuous improvement.
  • Experience a state-of-the-art web-based accreditation system that is continuously being upgraded and improved.
  • Students and their parents will:
  • Experience ease in transferring credits from one school to another.
  • Gain greater access to federal loans, scholarships, postsecondary education and military programs that require students attend an accredited institution.
  • Benefit from their institution or educational system’s commitment to raising student performance and accountability.

How the students learning Tamil can benefit from Accreditation?

In most of the US states, additional language learning is mandatory from Grade 9 to 12. Students study a language like French, German or Spanish to get the 1 language credit for a year from Grade 9 to 12.

The school district provide the learning opportunities for various languages at their schools based on the ethnic population living in the school district and also based on the funds available to allocate dedicated teachers for the language teaching from Grade 9 to 12.

Alternatively any of the ethnic origin people can learn any language at accredited language schools in their state and apply for the 1 language credit. The weekend Tamil schools at various states provide this opportunity for all their students to get the language credits.

The accredited Tamil language schools instantly provide the credibility for the parents to apply for the language credit at their school district. AdvancEd accreditation has the widest acceptance all over US, so far there is no known School districts which does not approve the AdvancEd accreditation in USA.