Accreditation

Cognia Accreditation (spring 2024 visit)

Every four years a school undergoes an accreditation process. In the spring of 2024, St. Patrick's was up for renewal. AdvancED was remained to Cognia and will be the organization we are apply to be accredited through. 

Cognia was established to fill a crucial gap in education: the need to bridge school evaluations with student assessments in order to see a full picture and improve education in a more comprehensive and holistic way. Cognia offers accreditation and certification, assessment, professional services, and consulting to help schools drive continuous improvement. The organization focuses on innovation to provide more agile solutions for school improvement and to drive better outcomes for all students.

Noteworthy Practices

Areas for Improvement
  • Leaders demonstrate awareness of potential influences on institution stability and engage stakeholders in planning and implementing strategies to maintain stability and respond to change. Leaders listen to stakeholders, form committees to research issues, collect and analyze data, and implement strategies for solutions, consistently ensuring learners' well-being is at the heart of the school.
  • Develop and implement a formalized process for professional staff members to strengthen their professional practice. 
  • Establish a process for professional staff members to engage in action research. 

AdvancED Accreditation (spring 2019 visit)

While many awards given to schools recognize what a school has accomplished, the AdvancED Accreditation process interests itself in the future of the school. Once convinced a school is poised for greatness, it then seeks to assist in maintaining that ascent into excellence.  In the spring of 2019 the AdvancED Accreditation External Visitation Team once again awarded St. Patrick's Catholic School with AdvancED Accreditation from the Nebraska Department of Education. This honor, the result of years of hard work by many dedicated individuals, was bestowed upon our school in recognition of meeting and exceeding all seven of the AdvancED’s "Accreditation Standards for Quality Schools." 

The external visitation team assessed St. Patrick’s and found the following from the the 2019 2020 visit:

Strengths
  • A family atmosphere and strong sense of community are very evident. 
  • There is a culture of seeking and responding to feedback, which helps to achieve the school’s mission and desired outcomes for learning. 
  • Classroom observations and interviews indicate a high level of engagement from students, students are self-directed, and classrooms are well-managed. 
  • Frequent meetings of both vertical and horizontal teaching teams allow teachers to review data, discuss student learning needs, and maintain consistency of instruction. 
  • Staff members have multiple opportunities to receive professional development for curriculum and technology, both within the school and from outside sources. 

Opportunities
  • Adopt a school-wide instructional framework that includes common goals that serve as an umbrella over all instructional practices. 
  • Continue to collect, analyze, and use data from multiple sources to improve instruction and student learning through the PLC (professional learning community) process.