New Transparency Cracks Open ‘Black Box’ of Accreditation

Clare McCann's blog post about a new policy requiring accrediting agencies to report actions to the Department of Education was covered in POLITICO's Morning Education:

Starting this week, accrediting agencies are reporting to the Education Department and the public, using common definitions, the actions they’ve taken with respect to the institutions they review and approve (such as placing them on probation or withdrawing accreditation from a college). And better yet, they’re posting the decision letters for those actions online, for the world to see.

This is no small feat. Accrediting agencies, with few exceptions, are notoriously opaque about the steps they take to oversee and penalize institutions. To make matters worse, a probation status from one accrediting agency might mean a college is just shy of losing accreditation altogether, but might be a much less egregious action from another accreditor. And even where they publish the already-required basic updates of accreditation statuses for every school, the agencies usually leave out any of the details that might be useful to policymakers, state authorizers, licensure bodies, other accrediting agencies, students, or families, all of whom have a stake in knowing what risks exist at an institution.