Accreditation Is Seen as High Priority
To ensure quality and credibility, online schools seek official evaluations by recognized accrediting agencies.
Not all school accreditation agencies are set up to handle the operations of online education providers, but the accelerating growth of virtual schools is prompting many accreditors to adapt to evaluate those types of programs.
“Accreditation is important simply because of a quality-standards issue,” said Butch Gemin, the senior consultant for the Evergreen, Colo.-based Evergreen Education Group , an online-learning research and consulting firm. “Is the school really a high-quality school, or is it not?”
To ensure quality and credibility, as well as the transferability of credits from a virtual school to a traditional brick-and-mortar school or postsecondary institution, seeking accreditation from “a viable and recognized accrediting agency” is an important step for virtual schools and other online programs to...
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