ISO Update. One Month Until External Audit (Middle States Review) of our Educational Institution

Dear ISO Community,

Now that we are one month away from our Middle States External Review, we have a chance to look back and reflect on the overall process that our stakeholders (past and present) began in October of 2019. It has been a 12-month journey that has allowed us to support our school community and grow together for the improvement of education and student learning here at the International School of Ouagadougou.

We are very fortunate to have a strong community, and one that has proven resilient to the many unique challenges that ISO has faced, and a community that has assisted in putting an accredited school on this historic school site for the first time in 1984! Now… some 36 years later, we get to reaffirm this process of continual school improvement.

The value that we gained from the self-study process has been in working collaboratively as partners! This will culminate during the week of October 19th with a formal visit from an external team, and the findings of this team, in addition to our own conclusions we reached while working on our self-study. The Board of Trustees and myself are looking forward to reviewing the external self-study report, as it will help guide us in addressing any issues or stipulations. These ‘issues or stipulations’ are not meant to be punitive or critical, but rather to help ISO stay focused on the most crucial areas for improvement. In short, they will help the school Governance and Administration stay on track, plan for investments, and determine priorities.

The process of accreditation is all about strategic planning – the road map forward. This Friday will be a professional development day (school will be in recess) for our faculty to meet and address areas for improvement that our community identified in the self-study. As a School Director, I have always been very impressed with the Middle States Association multi-level review process to ensure consistency, objectivity and quality:

• Step 1: Recommendations made by the visiting team
• Step 2: An evaluation done by MSA staff
• Step 3: An evaluation done by an advisory committee (comprising of 12 international school heads)
• Step 4: A review conducted by an accreditation committee
• Step 5: A review led by the full Commission

The MSA peer-reviewing process is a highly regarded model of continual school improvement. During “normal visits”, we would get the team report after the next 2 – 3 weeks, and once it is fact-checked, it would be sent to MSA for an evaluation in February, when the MSA commissioners meet, review and approve the recommendations.

Finally, a quick note of appreciation goes out to the External Middle States Visiting Team. They will dedicate a week of their personal and professional life to help assist us, as a school, in our goal of ongoing continual improvement.

Once again … we would like to thank the following members for their service:

Mr. Jack Delman – Team Chair – Headmaster Emeritus

Mr. Nathan Chapman – Secondary School Principal – American International School of Lisbon

Ms. Ainhoa Martin-Chico – Assistant Head of School – Madrid Montessori School

Mr. Abdoulaye Faye – French Department Coordinator – IQRA Bilingual Academy

Board MeetingTuesday, September 29, 2020 @ 6p.m
Agenda Attached.