Bibb superintendent pleased with preliminary accreditation report

Preliminary results for the Bibb County school system's five-year accreditation review show that the school district is "moving in the right direction," Superintendent Curtis Jones said.

A team with the accrediting agency visited the district Oct. 1-4 for its five-year evaluation, and it has recommended a score of about 340 out of a possible 400 points. Jones said he was pleased with those results, especially considering that last year's average score for about 3,000 school districts was 278.

"The AdvancED review that we received was very complimentary of our Board of Education, of the work that the school district is doing as a whole," Jones said. "There were many best practices that were identified."

AdvancED must still vote on and approve the findings at its meeting in January, but Jones does not expect any changes in the results. The official report should be available around the second week in January.

"That 340, it's the second highest score I've ever seen. That's a very good score," Jones said. "It confirmed a lot of things, and we're going to use that to continue to move forward."

The last time Bibb County was reviewed, AdvancED used a different system and metric, Jones said.

The agency placed the district on warning after a review in May 2013. Problems were cited in the areas of governance and leadership, teaching and assessing for learning, and resources and support systems, and the district was given two years to show improvement, according to previous Telegraph articles.

Board members addressed the issues, and AdvancED updated the district’s status to “accredited” in July 2015.

This story was originally published December 14, 2017 at 8:19 PM with the headline "Bibb superintendent pleased with preliminary accreditation report."