Cedar Ridge Academy is pleased to summarize the comments of the accreditation visiting team in response to our 2012 self-study.
Three gentlemen chosen by the Utah State Office of Education visited our campus yesterday after having studied our report over the past two weeks. They met with the faculty, the administration, and talked to students. They also visited the classrooms and observed our school day in process.
The responsibility of the visiting team is to evaluate our self-evaluation and make commendations and recommendations in support of our continual improvement. They also make a recommendation to the state regarding our next accreditation term.
The commendations of the visiting team were:
Cedar Ridge Academy has a culture of mutual respect among staff and students that they observed in our interactions.
We have high levels of integration among the academic, therapeutic, and residential components of our academy.
We have made good progress in instituting our DRSL, which was to improve student writing through the writing process.
We have good educational leadership under the direction of Christine Haggerty.
The recommendations of the visiting team were:
Continue our DRSL to improve student writing and track more data to support evidence that it has been institutionalized and successful in learner outcomes.
Agree among the faculty how to implement a school wide assessment of our writing DRSL.
Choose an additional DRSL for our next accreditation cycle (probably something from the Life Skills area).
Increase the technology in the classrooms for the teachers.
Provide more time for the teachers to specifically work on curriculum development.
The visiting team recommends Cedar Ridge Academy for a five year accreditation term, which is the longest term available through the new accrediting organization under AdvancEd. They are recommending that we have an interim data visit so that we can get some coaching on how to track data quantitatively. They said that they saw plenty of evidence that we were successful with implementing the writing process to improve student writing, but we struggled to convert that evidence into the quantitative data necessary for self-study reports.
The gentlemen who visited were very helpful, encouraging, and supportive of our academic efforts. We enjoyed hosting them on our campus and commend them for their professionalism and observations. We also appreciate all of you who helped in our focus groups and who filled out surveys for our data collection.
The official visiting team report will be available on the state's website in about two months. We will send out a link when it is available. In the meantime, you may request a PDF copy of our accreditation report from the office.
Sincerely,
Christine Haggerty, Dean of Academics
and the Cedar Ridge Academy Faculty
Cedar Ridge Academyis a nonprofit boarding school for grades 9 through 12. Our flexible academic design allows students to accelerate their learning, achieve academic success, and actualize their inner potential.