Talladega city schools

Cognia defines continuous improvement as "an embedded behavior rooted in an institution's culture that constantly focuses on conditions, processes, and practices to improve teaching and learning." Accreditation is a continuous improvement process that helps an institution improve teaching and learning. Using Cognia’s Performance Standards, the institution examines its current effectiveness as well as its capacity and capability to achieve its vision and goals for the future. 

Cognia believes all institutions can improve no matter how well they are currently performing. In the same manner that educators are expected to understand the unique needs of every learner and tailor the education experience to drive student success, every institution must be empowered to map out and embrace their unique improvement journey. Cognia expects institutions to use the results and analyses of data from diverse sources to select and implement actions that drive improvement in education quality and student performance. Cognia recognizes that each institution’s improvement journey is unique, and that we can serve you best by providing key findings specific to your institution. 

Around the turn of the 21st century, accreditation transformed its focus and process from a ten-year evaluation focused on the accomplishments of an institution's past decade to a forward-focused process examining what an institution is striving to accomplish in the next five years. Modern accreditation examines the current and future capabilities and capacities of an institution in the context of its mission, purpose and direction. The Standards for Accreditation define how a good institution behaves and provides the criteria to focus improvement efforts that will lead to growing learners, teachers, and leaders. 

In reality, modern accreditation is a continuous improvement process. Every five years, the institution formally engages the Standards for Accreditation to reflect and examine its progress towards its desired future as expressed through its mission, purpose and strategic direction. Cognia's purpose driven, strategic process is the most widely used continuous improvement process in the world.

This report contains the findings of the Engagement Review Team (the Team). The findings of the Team are organized in five sections: Cognia Performance Standards, Observations, Assurances, Insights from the Review, and a Summary of Findings that includes Noteworthy Practices and Areas for Improvement. 

Accreditation is pivotal to leveraging education quality and continuous improvement. Using a set of rigorous research-based standards, the accreditation process examines the whole institution—the program, the cultural context, and the community of stakeholders—to determine how well the parts work together to meet the needs of learners. Through the Cognia Accreditation Process, highly skilled and trained Teams gather firsthand evidence and information pertinent to evaluating an institution's performance against research-based Cognia Performance Standards. Using these Standards, Teams assess the quality of the learning environment to gain valuable insights and target improvements in teaching and learning as we