Regional panel reaccredits Bangor High ‘Extensive process’ yields recommendations for school

BANGOR – Bangor High School has been reaccredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Public Secondary Schools, according to a report released this month.

Though the accreditation is good for 10 years, it doesn’t mean educators can rest on their laurels, Superintendent Robert Ervin said Tuesday. Come September, they’ll get cracking on the report’s recommendations for improvement, he said.

“When you get your report back, you never get an A-plus,” Ervin said. “The process of improvement doesn’t leap in 10-year increments. They may come up with more than a dozen recommendations of things we can do to improve.”

The main objective of the accreditation process was to assess the quality of Bangor High’s instructional practices and to see whether they mesh with the Maine Learning Results and the national No Child Left Behind Act, according to Paula Tingley, the high school’s guidance director and dean of students.

“It’s a hugely extensive process” that began more than two years before the accreditation team’s three-day visit last fall, Tingley said. Preparations for that visit included a comprehensive self-study that involved every faculty member at the high school. It also involved surveying parents and others from the community.

The entire process cost about $21,000.

Accreditation, Tingley said, “is really important for a school because it means you’ve met some rigorous standards.”

Ervin added, “I think in all honesty the larger reason is that we all want some kind of external jurying on our operation and our performance, and this brings a group of experts into the high school to look at everything from our curriculum and extracurricular activities to instruction, technology and the overall mission of the school.”

In its discussion of significant findings, the NEASC accreditation team noted:

“Bangor High School has employed the self-study process as a means of examining programs and services it provides for Bangor students as well as its fundamental belief about teaching and learning. It has delineated accurately its many accomplishments as well as some significant needs in the self-study process.

“Its identification of strengths and needs along with the conclusions and recommendations found in this report will form the basis for continued school improvement.”

The number of commendations about Bangor High in the report far outweighed the recommendations for improvement.

Recommendations for improvement ranged from providing formal opportunities for parent-teacher conferences and developing scoring guides that allow students to understand what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable work to developing an evaluation process for all teachers that promotes instructional improvement.