When parents in North Andover heard this summer that their high school was back on warning by an independent accreditation agency, they wondered how it could be possible. After all, the school was just taken off warning last October.
But these days, it's not hard to land on the growing list of high schools on warning by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
Locally, Andover and Salem, N.H., are also on the warning list, and Haverhill has been on probation — one step worse than warning — for close to a decade. Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, N.H., just made it off probation last year after seven years on the list.
According to accreditation officials, about 120 New England schools are on warning at any given time, while 20 or so are on probation.
School district leaders say a mix of budget cuts and higher education standards make it hard to stay off the list.
"I'm not going to lose sleep over it," Andover High School Principal Peter Anderson said. "We continue to win awards and recognitions, and that doesn't seem to affect it."
A school that has accreditation is deemed to have buildings, staff, resources and a curriculum that is conducive to learning.
The New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which has been around since 1885, accredits 95 percent of high schools in New England. Schools are evaluated for re-accreditation every 10 years, with reviews in between.
For three to four days, a group of education experts — many of them administrators or teachers from other districts — visit classes, shadow students, and interview parents and teachers.
A team from the NEASC visited Timberlane Regional High School in Plaistow, N.H., in the spring, recommending 45 areas of improvement for the next decade, and citing 30 where the school has already made strides. High on the list of recommendations was to ensure that all students, including those with special needs, have the same opportunities.
Accreditation through the NEASC is voluntary. Most districts participate as a way of comparing themselves to a set of standards.
The experts place a school on warning when it fails to meet one of the association's learning standards, which typically happens after budget cuts or as a building gets older. If a school fails to show improvement, it is placed on probation. The next step would be losing accreditation altogether.
"A school is still fully accredited whether they are on warning or probation," NEASC Associate Director Charlie McCarthy said.
But losing accreditation is rare, he said. It only happens once every few years.
"As long as they can show there is some reasonable progress, accreditation is not terminated," McCarthy said.
Lawrence lost its accreditation in 1997 after receiving multiple warnings for problems with the school's curriculum, class sizes and buildings. It finally regained accreditation in 2004.
"It's kind of a black eye, as I may say, to the community," Lawrence Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy said. "For us, it was a good self-evaluation of where we were and what needed to get done."
But warnings have become commonplace.
"There are schools that just ignore it," Haverhill Superintendent Raleigh Buchanan said. "Some school committees don't understand it."
Then there are schools like Methuen and Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H., which have been fully accredited for years. Methuen has been accredited since 1993, and Pinkerton since the 1970s.
Failing to measure up
Deficiencies in almost any area can land a school on warning or probation, but typically it only happens when those shortcomings have impacts on students' ability to learn.
Andover was placed on warning in 2006, after the school cut more than a dozen employees, reduced its supply budget and eliminated some courses.
The school approved $380,000 to restore some positions, but it remains on the list because its library has too many outdated books and there is no head of the world languages department.
Anderson said 85 percent of the school's nonfiction section is 10 years or older.
"Are we going to get $500,000 to upgrade the library with all the other demands?" he asked. "Has it had a negative impact on their education? It's not likely."
Anderson said money spent in recent years for electronic database subscriptions "more than compensates" for the lacking nonfiction collection.
The school must send the association a two-year progress report this October.
Haverhill High School recently got the $5.4 million renovation it needed, providing new electrical systems that allow every classroom to have computer capability, as well as new lockers, new floor tiles, a fresh coat of paint, and other amenities.
The school has been on probation since 1998 because of its failing building.
While Buchanan feels the recent renovation addresses the concerns brought up by the NEASC, he now has new worries as the agency prepares for a visit in October.
"We're on probation for community resources, we've demonstrated that we had a renovation," he said. "Now I'm worried about text books. Or they could say class sizes are too big or the library doesn't have proper certification, or not enough guidance counselors."
North Andover High School has found itself on and off the warning list since 2004.
The association most recently placed the high school on warning in October 2006, telling officials to reduce class sizes and find more money for teachers after a series of budget cuts.
The agency lifted the warning in October 2007 after several appeals by former Principal Susan Nicholson and approval of a $1.65 million Proposition 2 1âÑ2 override.
Agency officials then visited the high school days later for its 10-year review. They issued a report in March issuing a new list of improvements North Andover would have to make to keep its accreditation. The report cited a need for more electives, more professional development for teachers and smaller class sizes. The school was placed back on warning in June.
Principal Carla Scuzzarella said her staff has already fixed many items that were criticized and plans to send a letter to NEASC staff this fall, asking them to lift the warning.
Salem (N.H.) High School is on warning because of issues with the building structure in the library and the health services area, Superintendent Michael Delahanty said.
He said the warning about the deficiencies in the library has been on record since the school was first accredited in 1994. The library is too small and also doubles as a hallway that students use to get from one end of the building to the other.
School officials have been trying to address the problems for years, Delahanty said, but so far residents have not supported plans to renovate the building. Earlier this year, voters defeated a proposal to pay $1.5 million to develop plans for a proposed $41 million renovation.
Does it matter?
When word hit in North Andover that the high school had been placed on warning again, there were murmurs from some parents who wanted to pull their children out of the school. Many worried about how colleges would view their applications with the school on warning.
A past NEASC study found that admission officers said high school accreditation factored into college acceptance 86 percent of the time, and was considered "virtually necessary" 69 percent of the time.
"Kids get into college without accreditation," Buchanan, the Haverhill High principal, said. "But what I've seen is more and more valuing accreditation."
Still, most officials interviewed said a warning or probation means little to a college admissions officer.
"I honestly will tell you that I don't think being accredited carries the weight that it used to," Andover High's Anderson said. "For me, it's not a big thing."
Jorge Hernandez, the director of freshman admissions at Merrimack College, said high school accreditation is not considered there, and that is typical of most colleges and universities.
"The focus is always going to be on academics and what the student does," he said. "Whether the student comes from school A or school B, we're going to go ahead and judge the student on their own merits."
McCarthy said NEASC officials do not make warnings public, though the schools themselves usually do. If a college were to call and ask — which he said rarely happens — the agency cannot give out that information.
"It still says the school is fully accredited on the transcript," he said. "It doesn't say whether they are under warning or probation."
The agency does disclose when schools are on probation, however.
"The debate will go on forever on whether or not accreditation is what you need to have," Buchanan said. "To me, it simply says to the world that we're as good as anyone else."
— Staff writer Margo Sullivan contributed to this report.
