Q&A of the Day – The Palm Beach County School District’s Audit
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s Entry: Hi Brian, I heard your commentary this morning on the school board, and I wanted to make you aware that if parents have serious issues with the school board and they are not getting any kind of accountability at the local level, they can file a complaint with Cognia. Cognia is the school accreditation agency. The Palm Beach County School District is apparently being audited January 28-31, 2023.
Filing a complaint directly with the accreditation board requires the PBCSD county to do a root cause analysis and corrective action – if it is deemed to be a valid complaint. It also calls out the superintendent, Burke, to be accountable. That bugger is unreachable.
Personally, I have one issue that significantly affected my family which is the bus transportation system. I filed a complaint about this. I am not sure if this accreditation agency is run by liberals for liberals, but I am trying to make sure that school bus transportation services for the county are held accountable.
Bottom Line: You are right and kudos to you for picking up on what seemingly local news outlets didn’t. A once in a five-year audit of the Palm Beach County School District. As you mentioned, the audit is conducted by Cognia, a non-profit accrediting organization which also purports to be non-partisan and has been in operation since 1895. It’s been the preferred accrediting agency used in Florida. The audit process is a four day onsite comprehensive system review of Pre-K through 12th grade education conducted by a team of 36 auditors from Cognia. The Palm Beach County School District’s summary of the process is this:
The accreditation process is a strenuous undertaking which probes the entire system from policies to learning conditions, leadership, resources, and cultural context, to determine how well the parts work together to meet the needs of every learner. It ensures accountability for all and enhances the growth mindset for the system. The Accreditation acknowledges and recognizes an alignment of overall continuous improvement for a system of schools.
In terms of the stated impact of the Cognia accreditation... It’s broken out into four categories. The impact for students, parents, teachers/staff and for communities/business:
- Educational opportunities ensure a continuous improvement mindset is committed to raising overall student achievement.
- Students receiving services from an accredited institution have greater access to federal loans, scholarships, post-secondary education, and military programs that require students to attend accredited institutions.
- The accreditation process ensures parents that systems are implementing practices to better serve all students for the future? (yes, it has a question mark next to that statement on the school district’s site).
- The accreditation process holds teachers and staff accountable for overall improvement, and for having a positive growth mindset for the organization and their individual classrooms.
For Communities and Businesses
- Accreditation process highlights strengths of the system and allows an active voice from local businesses and communities. Accreditation is the launchpad to expand community input for economic growth and business expansion for minority and large businesses.
- Palm Beach County will continue to strive for academic excellence towards school improvement by continuing to maintain our A-Rated status. It’s Palm Beach County’s Time to Shine!
Notably, accreditation via third party agencies isn’t required of schools in Florida. The Florida Department of Education maintains annual reporting standards for compliance, so raising issues before and during an audit may matter to the process, however it's not necessarily a showstopper. It’s pretty rare for Cognia to fail school districts during the accreditation process, though it does happen. In 2018, the Montgomery Alabama School District failed the process due to noncompliance. In 2021, there was a showdown in Cobb County Georgia after 50 parent complaints were filed in the district prompting a special audit. The result didn’t change as the School District retained accreditation.
Palm Beach County’s audit wraps up today. Hopefully your concern regarding busing is addressed, even if it’s unlikely to impact the overall outcome in the school district. Keep me posted.