Accreditation Components

The school assesses all aspects of its operation to demonstrate compliance with all SAIS standards and indicators. This includes completing a School Snapshot that provides the visiting team with an overview of the school’s mission, history, leadership structure, and goals, as well as responding to the Accreditation Engagement Questions, which is a set of yes-or-no questions covering governance, financial wellness, and student safety. This component also includes a preliminary visit from the assigned visiting team chair, who visits the school approximately six to eight months prior to the team visit to review the school’s standards and indicators responses and offer guidance before the full visit.

The school develops comprehensive, mission-based, strategic goals based on input from all parts of the school community. The self-study process is a comprehensive review in which a school evaluates its programs, policies, and outcomes through the lens of its mission to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. This process typically involves collecting data, engaging all stakeholders, and producing the Self-Study Report that informs both the school’s strategic planning and the accrediting body’s assessment.

Schools are encouraged to use existing structures and practices as they embark on this aspect of the accreditation process. In other words, if a school already “engages in formal and regular strategic thinking and planning aligned with its vision, mission, and beliefs and provides for the continuity of mission,” it does not need to conduct a separate process to generate goals solely for the purpose of SAIS accreditation.

The school hosts a 2.5-day visit by a team of school leaders who will offer constructive feedback about how to achieve the strategic goals. The visiting team’s school visit is an opportunity to demonstrate to a group of volunteer peer observers how the school lives out its mission. The team’s focus is on learning as much as possible about the school’s goals, interacting with members of various stakeholder groups, observing daily life at the school, and offering meaningful feedback about how to achieve the goals developed by the school.