EDITORIAL: New accreditation shows district making progress

The recent announcement that the Darlington County School District has won a recommendation for accreditation status from AdvanceED means national recognition for the district and is news the community should welcome.

Once the recommendation is reviewed and approved by the AdvanceED Accreditation Commission, Darlington County will become the first public school district in the Pee Dee region and one of the first in South Carolina to hold the prestigious new accreditation status, a designation it will hold for five years.

The new accreditation designation places Darlington County in some fine company. AdvanceED provides accreditation, research and professional services to 23,000 public and private schools and 4,500 school districts worldwide.

A team of nine professional educators — five from South Carolina and four from other states — spent four days in the district conducting a review process that involved hundreds of district faculty and employees, parents and community and business partners in reaching its decision to recommend the district for the prestigious national accreditation status.

“District accreditation is a rigorous process that demonstrates to our students, parents and community that we are focused on raising student achievement, providing safe and enriching learning environments and maintaining efficient and effective operations staffed by highly qualified educators,” said Superintendent of Education Dr. Rainey Knight.

Dr. Robert Storer, director of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement for the state of Kentucky, who led the quality assurance review team that made the recommendation, said Darlington County’s public school system not only met all of AdvanceED’s quality standards, but exceeded those standards. “We looked at each individual standard, and we found you to be highly functional on all of the assessment standards,” he told district staff and the Darlington County Board of Education.

Participating in the demanding and rigorous review process itself paid significant dividends for the district. “This has been an invaluable experience for us as a district and as a community,” Knight said. “Not only does it validate all the things we are currently doing for our students, but it also gave us an opportunity to really identify and examine our strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, this will allow us to better serve our students and our community.”

Goodness knows, our public schools in Darlington County continue to face many challenges, such as funding, economic climate, staff diversity, increasing parental involvement, and they won’t be fixed overnight. The AdvanceED team identified a number of those but also offered some solid recommendations for meeting those challenges.

It’s difficult to know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve already been. The experience of this extensive review process will give educators in Darlington County another set of tools to keep our public schools moving forward.