Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Owlcast, Christian, and thank you for being with us. This is a discussion I was really, really looking forward to having for the longest time.
We've met again in the past and we've hosted you as one of our AI experts a few years ago for a panel discussion that we did in the school.
Although I don't know if you have visited the school in person recently. But you certainly are one of those people who knows us in a deep and profound way.
As chief Executive Officer of Middle States Association Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools, you're deeply involved with the accreditation processes and protocols that accredit schools like us. Can you possibly break down a little bit the mission of the association for our listeners? What makes the accreditation process vital for an educational institution and why is it of foundational importance?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, such a great question. So I would start with the word accreditation. A lot of people don't know what accreditation is.
And very simply, accreditation is the work of professional peer review for the purpose of school improvement.
So there's an ethic around accreditation that is centered on the idea that you and I and our colleagues in schools are professionals. We've been trained to be educational professionals and through the work of peer review, we can help one another to improve our schools. So schools go through a self study. They reflect on what they excel at and where they have areas for growth. They produce evidence to that effect in each category, and then they invite a team of professional peers to come and visit them and to be what we sometimes refer to as critical friends. You know, friends for sure, but who look with a critical eye that we don't ourselves have when we're working inside a school and to think about how that feedback can help us to grow. And then ultimately we have two commissions as you said already, in elementary schools and a secondary schools commission. And those commissioners are also peers, professional peers who review a series of recommendations from the visiting team and from the MSA staff and from an advisory committee. And they're the ones who make a final determination about accreditation. And I guess the last thing I would say is that the primary thing, the number one thing that makes accreditation important is that it is a mechanism, it's a trigger for growth, for positive change in the school. But there is also an important element for many schools, especially a school like ACS Athens, where you may be required to have accreditation in order to operate or in order to maintain a special relationship with the United States State Department Office of Overseas Schools. There could be several other reasons why a school might need accreditation and not Just want it.
So those are. Yeah, those are some of my introductory thoughts.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: It's all about the validity of the work that we do, I guess, and how valid your diploma is when you finish as a student. So for schools like ACS Athens, it is common knowledge that the accreditation process offers a unique opportunity to do some meaningful and deep introspection on what we say we do, and in a sense to do a self evaluation whether we do what we say, say we do.
But is it only introspection or does this process have a more profound effect to the entire community?
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's another great question. So it is definitely much more than introspection. Our accreditation protocols are built on research based best practices.
So when we ask a school to reflect on what it's doing, what it says it does, and whether it's doing it, and doing it as well as possible, those are not directionless questions. Those are questions that are organized around research bases and best practices.
And so the very act of reflecting on those questions means that you're being invited to engage with what we know works in schools. Now there's tremendous variation in what works in schools according to context. And so what's what we call wise change for one school?
What's wise for one school may not necessarily be wise for another school.
And at Middle States we are super, super keen to make sure that a going through that self study process and receiving the visiting team of professional peers is answering those questions and engaged in dialogue around those questions for their context. We do not want ACS Athens answering those questions in the same way that, you know, St. Monica's down the road here in New Jersey is going to answer those questions because your, your contexts are so different. And yet what unites the two processes is that we can point back to standards of excellence, we can point back to the research and the best practices that underpin those standards, and we can point back to indicators of quality. And that's where the evidence comes in. The evidence is how you show you're meeting these indicators of quality. And I'm glad you pointed out that around the world the accreditation by Middle States and others as well is a really important signal to universities that that transcript from ACS ATH is not just valid, but it's high quality.
That's really critical.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: And of course this is something that new families who cross our gates should know because they're looking for different academic options and educational experience different from the local national schools, public or private.
But they are not prone to engage into this discussion with us about our accreditation Most of the times you have been a teacher, you have been an administrator, school leader in your career and I'm sure you have had your fair share of interactions with parents. What would you say is the key argument, in your opinion to make to the new members of the community and how important is it for them to understand this accreditation mentality? In cases like in European countries, especially like Greece, you have a Ministry of Education that has the ultimate role, the ultimate checking.
In our case, it's a little bit different. How would you say how these new families can understand this mentality?
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm a parent of a high school age child and what I want to know when I select a school for my son is has this school undergone a rigorous process of evaluation by an objective, non conflicted third party?
And if there's a third party that has put their stamp of approval on the quality of that school and that third party is a trusted agency, then I would feel much better about sending my son to that school. And by the way, I send my son to a Middle States accredited school, right? My wife and I want our son to go to a school that is high quality. Middle States has been around since 1887. We've been doing this work for a very long time. We're the second oldest accreditor in the world and I take no credit for that.
This place has been the gold standard in accreditation for over 100 years. But the important thing is that parents should understand that when a third party like Middle State says this school has not only passed, but has really earned distinction with its accreditation, that should be some assurance to them that they are entrusting their child to a really great educational community.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: And in my career in the admissions over the years, this has been a discussion mostly with parents that have some kind of an academic background. But this is not the majority.
So I think it's very valuable what you're saying to us as an argument.
There are many fundamental standards and areas where a school is accredited by. There are areas for improvement, areas for change to be made, and areas of celebrating achievement. If you had to rank the top three, not many, three areas where a school must focus in order to live up to its mission.
Which are those areas in your. In your.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's such a great question. I'm going to start by saying something that's a little bit different from what you're asking, but I'm going to connect it to your question.
So every year I will go on two, usually one or two accreditation visits and it's always My favorite thing that I do in the year because I love being inside schools. I love being on that team of professional peers because there's great colleagueship there. But more than anything else, I love watching kids learn and I love watching adults create the conditions for kids to learn. There's nothing more magical than that.
And so what I see that accreditation brings to the surface is what is distinctly beautiful and powerful about how a given school creates the conditions for learning.
I was just at a, on an accreditation visit a few weeks ago at a school actually not far from my house, and, and it's an all girls Catholic school. And one of the things that I noticed was the teachers, the coaches, the administrators, every single person, every single adult in that school knew every girl by name. They knew whether she had had a test or a game the day before they asked how her project was going. Every child in that school felt seen and cared for by the adults. And that to me was just absolutely magical. And it was something that I wanted to note both in my written comments in our team report, but also in my spoken comments to the, to the internal coordination team, because that is what makes that place valuable for parents and for kids.
And also they were clearly doing something right with the adults because all of the adults had bought into this approach to creating a great learning environment. So the first thing I will say in the number one slot that accreditation can help to bring to the surface about what makes a school great is that sense of organizational culture around how do we do things here. And at that school, the way they did things was they called every girl by her name and they asked her about something that they knew was important to that child.
It was not like, hey, you got this problem wrong or where's your homework? Or your book bags in the hallway. But it needs to be, you see that in some schools, and maybe those schools excel in other areas. In this school, it was something very different. So that's the first thing. The second thing, and this is a little bit more abstract, but when you're on a visiting team, you can see this in real time, is the importance of the foundation standard. So at middle states, our foundation standard has to do with your mission statement, your vision, your values, your portrait of a learner, and all of those things together create the North Star for your community.
And so everything that a school does should align to the things that are in the foundation standard. So when I look at a school's self study, the first thing I look at is what is their foundation standard?
What do they say about themselves? Vis a vis their foundation standard. And then when I'm on the visit, I'm looking for evidence, and it's often not the documented evidence, it's the stuff you see in the hallways. And then the third thing is in the self study, as you know, John, a school will name two or three, sometimes even four goals for improvement.
And this is always one of the best conversations that I have with a school because they may identify goals for improvement that align exactly with what I and the visiting team may feel is in their best interest. But it's also a great opportunity for us to push their thinking and to invite them to be bolder and more ambitious with what they believe is possible.
And so that part of the accreditation process is important because, you know, we all have blind spots and we like to be able to say that we know ourselves well, and we do in many ways, and the self study helps bring that out. But having that visiting team as a, as an outside pair of eyes can really help you to become bolder and more ambitious.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: And admittedly, from all those that I have talked to that have been part of an accreditation team, a visiting team, it's a great professional development opportunity.
So what you just described that attests to that. So as being part of an accreditation team of accreditation teams in schools, you go to visit the campus, study the documentation they prepare for the team to review, to observe the teaching, learning, give the feedback.
I would like to know, if I ask you to reflect on a case that really surprised you, either in a positive or in a negative way, what would you say the role of the accreditation was in either propelling for X excellence or averting a disaster? Again, no names of schools, obviously, but I'm curious to see what is your take in. In such cases and what was the final outcome?
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Yeah, another great question, John. So I am fortunate because the schools that I have visited have all been what I would consider really strong schools, high quality schools.
And anything that was an area for improvement was building on a strong baseline. There were no radical deficiencies. Just for. Just as a. Not from a process standpoint, When a school is receiving that accreditation visit, the visiting team may recommend monitoring issues because they see a weakness that needs to be strengthened or even something called a stipulation where you might have stairs that are falling apart and that's a real material danger and it's gotta be fixed right away or else we can't accredit you. So we do have mechanisms in place to ensure that when there's a problem, we can address it right away or we can ask the school to address it right away.
But I would say, I would go back to what I said a moment ago.
In these schools, all of the schools that I've been able to visit, there have been real areas of strength, no areas of material deficiency. And so what's great about the process is, as I said, being able to push someone's thinking. So I'll give you a concrete example.
On a recent visit, we were talking about the challenge in tuition and the local community and not wanting to price students and families out and wanting to be accessible to basically a very wide spectrum of students and talking about the challenge of the expectation of the affluent families compared with the expectations of the middle and lower income families.
And I got the impression that the affluent families were kind of taking a lot of the oxygen out of the conversation because they were more demanding.
And I asked the, the internal coordination team if they had ever used Generative AI to do some, some role playing and some scenario planning and to think about, like, okay, we're going to have this conversation with different sets of parents.
You know, tell me what an affluent parent might say in response to this new thing that we're going to do, or if we set our tuition at this price, what are, what are some scenarios play out for, different scenarios about what our applicant pool could look like. And so just really getting them to think about using Generative AI as a strategic thought partner and as, also as a, as a risk modeler and a risk mitigator.
And I'm sure they would have done fine without, without that, but they were really fascinated by the idea that they now have a new team member called Generative AI and that they can use that to go from good to great.
And so that's the kind of opportunity.
And I like playing that role as someone who's been ahead of school twice. And as you said, being on an accreditation team is great professional development because you see the entire system of a school. I love being able to play that role, to help them connect the different parts of their system.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Christian, you're leading one of the select agencies that accredit American schools around the world, American schools that offer the American curriculum, but some, like ours, that offer also the international diploma. Personally, I have been a member of teams that visited schools offering both diplomas, and it was quite interesting to see the congruence, the harmony between the two systems, especially when examining academic outcomes and student potential. What is your take?
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah, so our accreditation framework tends to operate at, you know, somewhere, let's say between 15 and 30,000ft.
It's a flexible framework, as I said earlier, we recognize the incredible diversity of schools. So our framework has to accommodate all sorts of curriculum, all sorts of assessment models.
And so the framework, as I said, is, you know, flying at, you know, 15 to 30,000ft. But when we partner with schools that are using an IB curriculum or the AP curriculum or even Cambridge or other, you know, other, you know, well respected curriculum and assessment models, those are flying, you know, somewhere between 15,000ft and, you know, 2,000ft. And so what we do is we work together in a complimentary way. We're not pulling in different directions. It's sort of like, okay, in the Middle States framework, there's a whole standard for teaching and learning and the IB or the AP or the, or Cambridge or, you know, pick your curriculum model can plug into that part of our framework, because that part of our framework is flexible enough, but it still requires the school to identify, you know, what does great learning look like? How does our curriculum address that definition of great learning? How do we assess and produce student achievement and student growth according to, again, that curriculum model and that definition of learning?
So we really work in a complementary way and in a partnership way with, with all sorts of, of curriculum models.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Accreditation is, you know, admittedly really fundamental, but also for people outside the process, complicated situation that invites participation from all stakeholders in a community.
So the community comes together, they review, they revise, they innovate. Always having in mind the mission of the school and the promises that we make to our students, the protocols and standards that are being considered must also stand through the test of time in order to be just that, standards.
However, in the past few years, a new place has emerged as a catalyst in all that we've been considering as a standard. It's a game changer, you know what I'm talking about and that reality shifter. And of course, it's all about artificial intelligence. And more specifically, with the new large language models such as ChatGPT, you mentioned it, Gemini, Claude, et cetera, mentioning just a few of the dozens that are now in existence. I have followed your posts, online, discussions you hold on the subject, and with different experts in AI for education, I see the perspective not being singular.
Nothing is black and white. There's no panacea. And there's also a no fix for all solution as it regards to the challenges that our schools are facing right now. First of all, what do you say to your own family about this? What do you say to your son? And how do you approach this subject? And Definitely. As msa, how do you approach leading the response to AI at the institutional level?
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Level, yeah.
So I'll start with my son.
When I had the privilege of speaking at your conference In March of 2023, I mentioned my son and talked about how I encourage him to use generative AI with my help and guidance and assistance. In fact, literally last night I showed him how I was using it for business reasons, not for academic reasons.
And he was very interested in that. But it all comes down to making sure that whether it's the adults or the students, they are using it in a way that is literate, that is safe, and that is ethical. If we don't have a foundation of AI literacy, safety and ethics, then we are building on sand and we're going to have whatever we're building collapse on top of us. So that's the number one thing I want to start with.
Because as you said, accreditation is about time tested standards. But for AI, it's a whole new frontier. There are no standards, or whatever standards we may think we have right now could change literally tomorrow or later today.
So, so what Middle States has done is kind of split our work into two. We have our accreditation, which we've already talked about up to this point. Point. And then we have a different model called an endorsement model, which is what our rail responsible AI and learning system is all about. And we use an endorsement model because it's not pinned down by research based best practices. Those take a long time to develop. They take a lot of consensus building.
And as you said, there are a lot of stakeholders, so parents and students and teachers and alumni and others may feel very strongly about these things. Right.
Endorsement allows us to explore that frontier that is still evolving in a way that's safe and literate and ethical.
But we are doing at Middle States, we are trying to do the work with our school partners and to be out in front as much as possible for our school partners so that you can explore safely for your students. Right. So I want my son to know what AI is, how it works, and how he can use it in a safe and ethical way. Way, because the genie is out of the bottle. We're not going to see less AI. We're only going to see more of it. It's only going to embed itself more and more in everything we do. And there are potentially very serious existential threats to schools, to businesses.
But as you know, John, from a lot of what I write and talk about, my deepest concern, and I talked about this back in March of 2023 at ACS Athens is human development development.
What do these tools mean for the development, the psychological development, the social and emotional development, the intellectual development of children who are at the most formational moment in their lives? We don't know.
We don't know. And so I take it as a very serious responsibility that middle States has to explore this territory to identify not the research based best practices, but some leading practices, some effective practices, some emerging practices that are again, engaged at the level of literacy, safety and ethics.
And I'll just to put a fine point on my deepest concern, the simulation of intimacy to me is just probably one of the most philosophically profound questions that I can think of. I think it's the most philosophically profound question of our time and of the things I admire so much about ACS Athens is your vision around conscious global citizenship and that idea of developing within each child this idea of a conscious approach to being a global citizen.
I'm so proud of the school for that.
And I know that as a school that's engaged deeply with AI, you take that question of human development seriously, as I do.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, ACS has been accredited twice under the Sustaining Excellence Protocol and currently prepares its action research findings to be showcased in the upcoming colloquium in 2026, which MSA and other schools will be attending. What do you expect to see in that colloquium and what is the value of action research for a school community in your eyes?
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, I wish I had a crystal ball to know what the content of that colloquium will.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Stay tuned.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I am incredibly excited for it. I will say also as an aside that being on accreditation visiting teams is my number one favorite thing to do every year. Attending the Colloquium for Sustaining Excellence, which I do more frequently, is my second favorite thing to do. It is just a total joy to see the incredible work that schools do around action research.
And I'm not sure how many people listening to this will know what action research is. But in a nutshell, a school identifies a problem of practice and then runs research on that. They form a hypothesis. There could be multiple hypotheses related to one big essential question and then collect evidence.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: And it's like a collective PhD, right?
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. Perfect way to describe it. Yes, absolutely. And if being on a visiting team, an accreditation visiting team is the number one best form of professional development, I think action research is the number two best, best form of professional development.
So what I would expect to see is a broad cross section of the ACS Athens community, teachers, students, maybe even parents and alumni who are coming together on that colloquium day to talk about what was this question that mattered to us and how did we approach it from the perspective of doing research in the classroom? Or it could be in other places, on the athletics field or in the research lab or in the library. It could be in any number of places. But how did it come to life in a, in a real experiential way?
And what did we learn about how to do things better from that? And it is just, it's so exciting.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: To see that we're only one year away. So yes, we're looking forward to it.
Finally, on a more personal note, if you think about all the things, things around education that you have been involved in, which one do you think has prepared you the most for your current career leading msa?
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Wow.
Well, I used to tell students this when I was ahead of school the first time.
I was completely unprepared to do that job. Totally unprepared and maybe even unqualified. But it was incredibly hard.
And it wasn't, wasn't what I had learned as a classroom teacher for the previous 15 years.
It was actually my undergraduate degree in philosophy.
Well, one of my majors was in philosophy and studying philosophy, which sometimes here in the United States gets dismissed as kind of a waste of time and it's too ivory tower, too theoretical. I found my study of philosophy to be totally practical because it was all about training me how to ask better and better questions. When I took that job as head of school for the first time, I had no idea, truly had no idea what to do. And so the only way I could figure it out was by asking questions. And so having had that training in philosophy was tremendously helpful. And then I will say the other thing that best prepared me was in high school I was on our basketball team and I was, was not, I'm not gifted athletically. I was on the team because I worked harder than anybody else on the team. And so I knew like, I was never going to be the person who scored a lot of points or got a lot of rebounds, but I could be the smartest person on the team and the hardest working person on the team. And just having a really keen appreciation for how a team has to consist of a diverse membership. Like everybody's got different strengths. And if you can figure out how to harmonize different strengths, strengths with a shared purpose and a shared mission, that was the other piece of what I think has helped me to succeed.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Great point. To finish this discussion, Christian Talbot, the chief executive officer of Middle States Association Commissions on elementary and secondary Schools, thank you so much for being with us. That is a profound piece of material for everybody to listen to. I think it gave us a great outlook of what MSA is all about and what we do as a school. Thank you so much.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Thank you. It was my privilege. And I can't wait to join you in 2026 for the colloquium.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Looking forward to it. Thank you.
