Tyler

By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer

All Saints Episcopal School has officially been accepted into and accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest.

All Saints Headmaster Arthur Burke said the private school learned Nov. 11 in Austin that it was admitted into the organization.

"While we cherish our Episcopal acc-reditation, this is a much more comprehensive accreditation," he said. "It allows us to network with the major independent schools in Texas. That's a huge boost to our ability to develop our programs for professional growth, for benchmarking our teaching and our curriculum."

Burke added, "It was a huge affirmation that we're doing the right things here at All Saints Episcopal School. It affirmed something I had known for some time, that we have a great program and great faculty. But this said it in a very compelling way - that we do have a great school."

The ISAS, founded in 1955, includes schools in Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Mexico.

The ISAS mission statement reads: "The Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS) promotes the highest professional and ethical standards of educational excellence for independent schools in the region and recognizes by formal ongoing accreditation those schools which demonstrate adherence to its standards ..."

"We are an association of really excellent schools, and we're proud and pleased to have All Saints Episcopal School in Tyler as a new member," Rhonda Durham, executive director of ISAS, said by phone. "The school and all of its constituents worked faithfully and diligently to meet our standards."

She said the association proposes "excellent standards and best practices in schooling, especially in independent schooling."

The benefits of being a member, Ms. Durham said, include, "being held accountable to a high set of standards."

"All of the people involved in the school can be assured of a certain level of excellence," she said, adding that there's also, "the wonderful aspect of school improvement and professional development opportunities that we have at member schools and their different constituents can take advantage of during the school year."

Burke said the process to gain the group's accreditation took more than two years. It began with a self-study, which he described as "a comprehensive examination of all that you do."

Committees of teachers, administrators, parents, students and board members were formed and they analyzed programs.

"You hold up a mirror to yourself. ... That's called a self-study. That took over a year for us to produce," he said.

The school also had to document its adherence to ISAS standards. Some of those standards included things such as looking at the grade point average for freshman students accepted into four-year colleges for the last three years. Burke said they discovered that the GPA for freshmen who graduated from All Saints was higher than 3.0.

A team from ISAS also visited All Saints, meeting with representatives from all the school's constituents. The group wrote a report about what they saw happening at the school, Burke said.

The group returned commendations and recommendations for the school.

"That's part of the reason for the accreditation ... all educators want to become better; all schools want to become better," Burke said of the recommendations they were given. "And this is about making us better."

The school will have to provide a written response after three years to show where it is with the recommendations. The group will be back in 10 years for another visit.

"It was a very in-depth, exhau-stive procedure by both the school and by the ISAS to gain membership," he said. "It's no small feat."

The commendations the school received, Burke said, affirmed what the school felt, "that we were doing an excellent job, but there's always opportunity for growth and always opportunity for becoming better."

Burke said there are more than 80 schools in the regional association. Many are in Texas.

Being a part of the ISAS allows the school to also be a part of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), which makes it possible for All Saints to network with schools on a national level and "avail ourselves to teaching practices that are going on in the very best independent schools across the nation - not just in the southwest," Bur-ke said, noting also the benefits of faculty growth and development.

Recommendations given to the school included strengthening and aligning curriculum as well as some specific programs that the school could elevate, Burke said.

Commendations were 2-to-1 to the recommendations, he said. He said they commended All Saints for things such as its sense of community, for its attention to the learning needs of students, atmosphere, teaching excellence and involvement of parents.

The governance structure of the board and the school's drive for excellence in all programs were also commended, he said.

Burke said the school is still accredited with the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools.

"The ISAS accreditation just opens up a world of possibilities for us to grow and become better," he said. "And that's exciting.

"The benefits of this are going to be long lasting and they'll be over many, many years," Burke said. "All Saints, with this accreditation, moved a huge step forward in independent school education."