Troubles at ACCJC
As most of you know, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges has been in the news a lot lately. It is unlikely that the events swirling around the commission will have much of a direct impact on Cabrillo’s 2013 accreditation process and the Visiting Team’s activities here Oct. 14-17. Nevertheless, the ACCJC is now facing some substantial challenges to their processes–indeed, their very existence–and that has generated a great deal of media and institutional attention.
Some Background
For over ten years the ACCJC has been enforcing accreditation standards in an increasingly rigid and punitive manner. In the last decade the ACCJC has found deficiencies (Warning, Probation, and/or Show Cause) in its member colleges at a rate roughly 8-10 times more often than other regional accrediting agencies.
The ACCJC has been at the forefront of using the accreditation process to institute Student Learning Outcomes (already implemented in other regions of the country) and to make outcomes assessment the central factor in the planning and budget processes at every one of California’s community colleges. Cabrillo’s dialog-driven SLO assessment model was put in place partially in response to changing accreditation standards in the early 2000s. We were ahead of the curve on implementation of SLOs, but even we at Cabrillo have concerns about various elements of the assessment process – e.g., ensuring the involvement of adjunct faculty. My personal position on SLOs has always been that if the process leads to focused conversations among instructors about what works for our students–and can improve students’ chances for success in our classes–well, that is always a good thing.
Some of the colleges that were placed on “Show Cause,” the most extreme sanction that threatens a college with losing its accreditation within a year, such as College of the Redwoods and Cuesta College, have been able to address the ACCJC’s concerns and have subsequently been removed from that status. However, City College of San Francisco, after its year on “Show Cause,” was notified in June 2013 that its accreditation would indeed be revoked at the end of the 2013-14 academic year.
ACCJC Under Attack
The California Federation of Teachers filed a complaint against ACCJC in April 2013. The Department of Education responded to that complaint in a letter to ACCJC (and cc’ed to Cabrillo’s own Paul Harvell, a co-sponsor of the CFT complaint) specifying four areas where the ACCJC needs to reach compliance within twelve months. The four areas are:
- Increasing the number of faculty members serving on visiting teams
- Avoiding even the appearance of conflict of interest – the husband of ACCJC President Barbara Beno served on CCSF’s visiting team
- Clarifying the meaning of a “recommendation” in ACCJC’s directives, and
- Specifying exactly when a “recommendation” needs to be corrected.
Other groups and individuals have been vociferous in their denunciations of ACCJC. Not surprisingly, many in San Francisco are trying to save CCSF and have been excoriating in their condemnations of the commission. Perhaps more tellingly, legislators from both sides of the aisle have recently spoken out against Barbara Beno, and even the apolitical Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges in 2011 blasted the ACCJC for the discontent emerging in the “community college culture” over current accreditation practices.
No one really knows what the next act will look like. In the next couple of months I will be joining in conversations at regional and statewide Academic Senate conferences about how all this may (or may not) impact the accreditation process. One very popular idea is to increase the accreditation cycle from six to ten years. All of the current controversy might lead to ACCJC reforming its practices, becoming more collegial and problem-solving in their approach, and surviving as an accrediting agency. At the same time, I think we all share the hope that CCSF can be preserved as the community treasure that it has been for many decades.
In the meantime, stay tuned. Things are getting interesting.
(Sources: Stephanie Swonger, “ACCJC Faces Its Own Challenges,” Sept. 13, 2013; CFT, “ACCJC: On a Mission and Off the Rails,” San Mateo Federation of Teachers, “ACCJC Gone Wild.”)
by Michael Mangin