Administrator's Message:  Accreditation

Generally speaking, humans tend to shy away from anything that's painful. But sometimes those things which hurt a bit (exercise, studying, hard work) help us to grow. As a school community, the process of accreditation is a little bit this way: some scary pain up front - but a worthwhile endeavor in the end.

Three Rivers Christian School has been working through the pre-accreditation process for a few years, and will officially begin self-assessment in preparation for a week-long site visit from an Association of Christian Schools International Accreditation Team in Fall of 2016. This team will be scrutinizing the school using a pre-determined rubric developed by Advanced Ed (a national accrediting organization and the "gold standard" in public and private schooling) and ACSI. They will rate us on our quality and efforts in the following five areas:

1. Purpose and Direction
2. Governance and Leadership
3. Teaching & Assessing for Learning
4. Resources & Support Systems
5. Using Results for Continuous Improvement

So why are we going through all of this trouble?

Ken Townsend, the Northwest Director for ACSI, has described this whole process to me as "organizational sanctification." Sanctification is defined as the "process of making holy; to consecrate." Sanctification requires winnowing through and rooting out the things that keep us from doing well. How do we ensure that we're delivering the best in education to our students? How do we ensure that we have rigorous systems for oversight of our academics, finances and future direction?

The answer is: we do a lot of work.   

We gather teachers, volunteers and board members, and we look honestly at the standards to see where we fall short. We bring in nationally-recognized education consultants to take a hard look at our test scores and help us implement new practices. We provide our teachers with the best professional development we can find. We survey our families to see where we fall short and where we exceed, and then we build scaffolding under the great things and we take the weak things back to the drawing board to be rebuilt.

And the bottom line is that we do it all for the glory of God. We desire, as a school community, to continually improve. We desire to be recognized not only for educational excellence, but for the purpose and direction we emphasize. Not only do we want our students to know concretely 'who they are and where they're going,' but as a school community, we want everyone who comes on our campus to know exactly 'who we are and where we're going.'

Accreditation will help us clarify and strengthen our efforts at TRCS. And, like exercise or studying, the little bit of pain will be worth it in the end.

Onward and upward!

Principal's Message

"Let your light so shine, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."