VHS Learning Earns MSA-CESS Reaccreditation 

Boston – VHS Learning has once again received accreditation from the Middle States Association Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools (MSA-CESS), a worldwide leader in accreditation and school improvement. A peer review team from Middle States member schools recommended VHS Learning for reaccreditation, and Middle States voted on the recommendation at its biannual meeting in Philadelphia. VHS Learning has been accredited by MSA-CESS since 2008.

For over 130 years, MSA-CESS has been helping school leaders establish and reach their goals, develop strategic plans, promote staff development, and advance student achievement. The institution accredits preK-12 public, private, parochial, and charter schools as well as non-degree granting career and technical post-secondary institutions and learning services providers. Receiving accreditation is a multifaceted evaluation process that schools and school systems voluntarily use to demonstrate they are meeting a defined set of research-based performance standards.

“This reaccreditation reflects VHS Learning’s commitment to supporting its school community.  Accreditation by MSA-CESS is a validation of the dedication and expertise that our faculty and staff have in teaching and learning best practices,” said Carol DeFuria, President & CEO of VHS Learning. “Middle States Association Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools accreditation is the gold standard for measuring and advancing school improvement, and our reaccreditation shows that VHS Learning is committed to excellence and continuous improvement.” …Read More

Online writing tools focus on teacher development, student engagement

The rigorous Common Core standards for writing outline the skills that students should be able to demonstrate beginning as early as kindergarten.

If there’s one skill that everyone agrees all students must learn across the curriculum, it’s how to write well—and the move toward adopting the Common Core State Standards adds even greater urgency to this effort.

The rigorous Common Core standards for writing outline the skills that students should be able to demonstrate beginning as early as kindergarten. For example, sixth graders should be able to write arguments to support their claims “with clear reasons and relevant evidence,” among other standards.…Read More

Scholars test online alternative to peer review

The internet is calling into question one of academia’s sacred rites, reports the New York Times: the peer- reviewed journal article. For professors, publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of university life. The grueling process of subjecting work to the up-or-down judgment of credentialed scholarly peers has been a cornerstone of academic culture since at least the mid-20th century. Now, some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media, there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience. “What we’re experiencing now is the most important transformation in our reading and writing tools since the invention of movable type,” said Katherine Rowe, a Renaissance specialist and media historian at Bryn Mawr College. “The way scholarly exchange is moving is radical, and we need to think about what it means for our fields.” That transformation was behind the recent decision by the prestigious 60-year-old Shakespeare Quarterly to embark on an uncharacteristic experiment in the forthcoming fall issue—one that will make it the first traditional humanities journal to open its reviewing to the World Wide Web…

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