The self-assessment presented new challenges and rewards for Soldotna High School. While surveys were distributed in the spring of the 2012-2013 school year, the self-assessment process among faculty began in the fall of 2013 and was not completed until January of 2014. The faculty planned to develop small teams that could offer a focused review of each standard. In the past, these teams were created by grouping faculty members based on their fields. For instance, the English department would review one standard, while the science department would focus on another. The specific AdvancED standards, however, necessitate teams composed of members from multiple departments in order to most accurately review the standard. The Vice Principal and Accreditation Leader created teams with diverse backgrounds and specific experience to best suit the standard review.
These diverse teams reviewed the standard as a group, scoring them based on the Self Assessment Workbook. Then they divided the standard components, individually created narratives, and gathered evidence before passing their work back to the group, the Vice-Principal and the Accreditation Leader. The teams arrived at a consensus for their ratings through multiple reviews, first looking at the standard components through the large scope of the Self Assessment Workbook, and later reviewing their scores by taking a focused view through the Self Assessment Concept Map. The teams encountered some challenges in that they had to seek answers and evidence from other departments, staff, and administration while scoring their standards, writing their narratives, and gathering their artifacts. These challenges, however, offered the faculty an opportunity to further their understanding of how Soldotna High School functions, learning a great deal about budgeting, the various roles, responsibilities, and achievements of their colleagues, students, and school as a whole.
A unique challenge Soldotna High School faced after compiling all of the narratives and artifacts lay in delivering them to the AdvancED review team. ASSIST currently lacks a place to upload the hundreds of artifacts gathered by our review teams, which, at first, presented a large problem. The solution we devised is this website. We originally created it as a means to efficiently distribute information to the review team, but have since discovered that it offers a unique opportunity to act as a resource to our faculty, community members, and the families of our potential students.