Bingham Academy shoots for accreditation candidacy

Bingham Academy completed the first phase of its accreditation candidacy Wednesday. The academy opened in August and is working toward full accreditation by the end of the 2015-2016 school year.

“We’ve been at it since school began. We’ve had all our teachers assigned to committees and we’ve had help from board members and others,” said Bingham Academy Principal Doug Owen. “Right now we have board members that are being interviewed and teachers are being interviewed, parents are being interviewed and that’s all part of the process.”

Bingham Academy started with freshman and sophomore classes that emphasize a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum. Owen said although the school meets Idaho Common Core standards, it fills a niche within the community when it comes to problem-solving learning.

“Many of the students that come in our direction have been in other charter schools at the elementary and middle school level and so it’s become part of that culture in their homes, to be a part of a charter,” said Owen.

The nonprofit accreditation agency, AdvancED, will base the school’s accreditation on five standards: 1) the school’s mission statement, 2) the school’s board, 3) teaching and learning impacts, 4) resources and 5) the school’s physical state.

“We kind of put everything together and determine if it’s (the school) sustainable and would they (students) have the capacity to go out and be successful after they leave school,” said the director of AdvancED Idaho, Dale Kleinert.

In recent years, there have been several eastern Idaho charter schools, like Odyssey Charter in Idaho Falls, that have failed to reach accreditation.

“The accountability is a big deal and we want to make sure that schools are doing the right thing for kids, said Kleinert. “Colleges will not accept students unless they’ve had the credits from an accredited institution.”

The school will find out if it has reached accreditation candidacy status in the next few weeks. Owen said he is very optimistic about the outcome.

“I feel good about the process so far and I know that the areas that they are going to talk to us about are areas we’re aware that we need to polish to be fully operational,” he said.