Who is SACS, and where did they get all this power?

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and its parent organization accredit thousands of schools in dozens of countries, including 97 percent of public schools in Georgia. SACS accreditation is essential for college-bound students: If their school doesn't have it, or loses it, they may not be able to gain admission to college or to qualify for scholarships if they do. When a school system loses the ability to send kids to college, that system's community loses something even greater: People leave, and few come in to replace them.

SACS put Atlanta Public Schools on probation last week -- finding serious fault with the school board's behavior and governance -- and gave the board until Sept. 30 to correct the problems. The board will vote on Monday whether to accept SACS' report, the first step on the road out of probation. Also on Monday, a SACS evaluation team will arrive in DeKalb to determine whether the 98,000-student system is meeting national accreditation standards.

SACS wields that kind of power without ever winning an election or being accountable to anyone. Part of that is simply the nature of being an accreditor: In education, as in law enforcement and health care, someone has to be the final authority, the keeper of the standards. And educational experts across the nation say SACS provides a needed set of checks and balances.

“In some cases, one could look at SACS and try to kill the messenger. It’s like if you are patient without a healthy lifestyle, if the doctor tells you that it’s time to make some changes, I don’t think it’s fair to blame the doctor,” said former state schools Superintendent William “Brad” Bryant.

Who are these people?

SACS used to be unheard of by anyone outside a superintendent’s office. Yet it is close to becoming a household name in metro Atlanta, even if few people really know what SACS does.

SACS and its parent organization AdvancED, last month moved into a 60,000-square-foot headquarters in Alpharetta. It was in Decatur for 21 years before moving to North Fulton. While there are numerous school accrediting agencies, AdvancED is the only one in the nation that accredits full districts, which means it scrutinizes everything from board governance and the superintendent's office to finances and following No Child Left Behind. Currently AdvancED works with more than 27,000 schools and districts in 69 countries, or about 15 million students.

It is headed by a former math and science teacher named Mark A. Elgart, who last year as CEO and president earned about $350,000 -- about the same as what Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall makes in a year. Elgart is also the agency's public face. So when school accreditation is in the news, as it has been so much of late, Elgart is in the news, too.

Elgart said it just been in the past decade that AdvancED began accrediting whole districts and reviewing the work of school boards.

“Although leadership issues appear to get the most attention in the media and community, most of our work centers on helping schools and school systems improve conditions for student learning,” Elgart said. “In fact the vast majority of our accreditation sanctions and required actions relate to teaching and learning.”

But it is the school boards, not teaching and learning, that have drawn so much of SACS' attention in metro Atlanta.

DeKalb and Atlanta’s problems are similar to those in Clayton, which in 2008 became the first school system in the nation in nearly 40 years to lose accreditation. All of the problems in these systems are about board governance, power struggles and unethical behavior – not teachers or lack of funding, Elgart said.

“Not one of these systems can say they lack resources. All of the metro systems are well funded,” he said. “It has nothing to do with race or whether a child comes from poverty. It’s how you use those resources to meet a child’s needs.”

Some local residents have criticized SACS for targeting inner-city minority districts.

State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) called SACS' action in Atlanta a “political move” based on a “biased and vague report full of hearsay and unattributed quotes.” Fort also said he thinks AdvancED’s 15-member board of trustees is unbalanced since only one member is black.

AdvancED’s 45-member National Accreditation Commission, which includes teachers and administrators from across the country, has the final vote on any accreditation loss. The smaller board of trustees operates like a school board and manage the budget and policies.

Seeing change

Yulonda Beauford, head of the Clayton County Chamber of Commerce, says the stunning loss of accreditation ultimately proved to be a blessing.

“We have as a community such a stronger connection and partnership with the school system because of the loss of accreditation,” Beauford said Thursday. “I would never wish this on anyone by any means, but it has made us a stronger community.”

SACS has provisionally restored Clayton's accreditation, but the district remains on probation. Charlton Bivins, who was appointed Clayton school board vice chair on Monday, won’t say whether SACS helped or hurt his community.

“Ask me after April,” he said.

That’s when SACS returns to Clayton to review the 50,000-student district’s progress and determine whether its accreditation will be fully restored.

"The thing that is important is that the outside agency puts standards in place and makes us stay on our toes and makes the children better,” said Bivins, who previously served as the DeKalb County sheriff’s accreditation manager. “I definitely wouldn’t say we should give up on SACS because they are needed.”

Bivins points out that many fields -- from police and lawyers to doctors and car dealers -- require accreditors. Just as Georgia requires lawyers to graduate from an American Bar Association-accredited law school to practice, students must graduate from an accredited high school to receive the HOPE scholarship.

Many elite universities, like Harvard and Stanford, said their primary focus is on students who graduate from nationally accredited schools, although they have begun to consider exceptions.

“We would want to understand why a school is not accredited and we would also like to know if they lost their accreditation, why they lost it?” said Bob Patterson, admissions director at Stanford.

Spelman College amended its procedures and admitted some Clayton students following the accreditation loss, since the problems were more with the board rather than the academics, said Arlene Cash, Spelman’s vice president for enrollment management.

Georgia beginnings

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools started in 1895 with a group of Georgia Tech professors looking to standardize the high school curriculum for college admissions. In 1933, the group expanded and began accrediting schools overseas through U.S. embassies to convince American businesses that the foreign schools were up to snuff.

School accreditation spread through the states in the 1960s as a way for elementary and middle schools to get the same resources high schools were receiving. In the south, Elgart said, high schools often got more resources for football than academics.

Five years ago, SACS merged with the North Central Association to form AdvancED. New England, the northwest, middle states and western states still maintain separate regional accrediting bodies not affiliated with AdvancED, but they only accredit schools not districts. The U.S. Department of Education now recognizes AdvancED as an authorized accreditor of K-12 schools in all 50 states, Elgart said.

In 2004, Fulton became the first school system nationally to receive district-wide accreditation.

“The district accreditation process validates that the system has its own processes in place to ensure excellence in schools,” said Fulton deputy superintendent Martha Greenway.

Atlanta is the only public school system in the metro area – and one of the only ones in the state – that is not fully accredited by SACS. Atlanta's high schools, but not its middle and elementary schools, are accredited.

Booming business

The accreditation process usually takes up to two years. In small school systems, accreditors visit every school. In large districts, they visit a random sample. Accreditors then visit every five years for a review.

School districts pay AdvancED $550 a year per school in accreditation fees; in Fulton County's case, that comes to $53,900 a year. Districts like Atlanta that don’t have full system accreditation pay $625 per school.

In addition, local school dollars pay to host the accreditors every five years, including travel, lodging and meals.

Clayton schools spent $6,200, including lodging at the Hampton Inn, when a four-person team visited in October, district spokesman Charles White said.

The accreditors who conduct those visits are educators from across the country. They are not paid.

In 2009, the non-profit AdvancED brought in $20.6 million from its services, including $14 million from accreditation fees, $5 million from state contracts and $1.6 million from conferences and workshops, Elgart said. That was about $2.7 million more than the previous year, according to federal tax records.

The organization paid out $9.4 million in salary, compensation and benefits, including $284,400 to Elgart. Elgart also made an additional $70,000 in compensation from the organization and related groups, according to tax records obtained by the AJC.

International accreditation is booming as more foreign nations look to show U.S. universities that their students can compete with American graduates. AdvancED also recently started accrediting Catholic schools. The organization has 38 regional offices nationwide, plus offices in Puerto Rico, Cairo and Saudi Arabia and, in a few months, Abu Dhabi.

Parents have begun to look on SACS and AdvancED as a resource -- and also as a complaint hotline. Those moving to new areas often call looking for school recommendations, Elgart said; others call to report violations.

In DeKalb, “I’m calling SACS” has been a routine threat used toward board members.

Bryant, the former state schools superintendent, said board members should not be worried but encouraged by the number of parents who want to improve their schools.

“Accreditation provides that extra set of checks and balances that parents need. It shows colleges that students received an education that was up to par. It shows residents that their tax dollars are being spent wisely,” said Bryant, who also spent 12 years on the DeKalb school board. “The ones who are afraid of SACS are the ones whose conduct is in need of repair.”

Staff Writer Jaime Sarrio contributed to this report.