The Nora School’s
Independent Accreditation

Accreditation is the process by which Independent Schools are assessed by a panel of other schools’ professionals, and assessed by a set of objective goals and measurable comparisons to ensure each accredited school is meeting and surpassing their promises, improving consistently in measurable ways, and operating in a way that verifiably corresponds to their published Mission Statements and Goals.

The Nora School was first accredited by the Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges in 1994, when it was then called the Washington Ethical High School, and located in the Washington Ethical Society building on 16th Street in Washington DC. 

The Nora School has been re-accredited several times since then, with the most recent coming in 2026.

The Self-Study

Every accreditation process begins with a Self-Study - a set of questions created to force a school to demonstrate its innermost workings, obstacles, and objectives. During the reaccreditation, this self-study is put in the hands of independent, outside professionals, and held both as a bar for the school to live up to, and a lens through which to see the school when they come to visit and interview the community.

The Action Plan

The key to any school’s continual improvement is its plans for the future. Nora has created a set of Objectives called an Action Plan, which stemmed directly from the self-study and calls us to action for the future. This plan includes a series of three concrete areas to measure, by which we can objectively gauge our school’s success:

1) The Student Portfolio

Since the early 2010s, The Nora School has been asking graduating seniors to present portfolios of their work, intended to demonstrate readiness for post-secondary school life. This “Senior Portfolio” collects each student’s best examples of high-level work in several categories, and allows the students time to present said work to a group of faculty.

Not only does this give the students a great insight into their progress during their high school journey, it gives the staff significant insights into how effective our overall program realizes the aims depicted in our foundational documents.

Considering the portfolio presentations as indicative of our progress as a school, we work backwards from there to see how our academic and social curricula support students through their time at Nora in producing a successful final presentation. In essence, we feel that the quality of the senior portfolio presentations tells us how well we are doing in our mission.

2) Mathematics

Math skills are critical skills: they include analysis, critical thinking, logic and attention to detail, all skills which our students will need in many areas of their lives.

While The Nora School offers parallel tracks in many study areas, in mathematics we generally align with the statewide curricula and sequencing. This allows us to measure our students compared to others in their cohorts, to make sure our results hold up.

While we do keep track of our “Measures of Academic Progress” (MAP) scores, and our overall schoolwide scores are something to be proud of, we feel we can and should set our goals differently.

Our students come to us from a wide variety of educational backgrounds and abilities, so while total achievement is nice, what we want to focus on is individual growth, as this meets students where they are and instills in them self-confidence and a desire for lifelong learning as they witness themselves improve.

This data can also help individual teachers tailor their lesson plans and pedagogical approaches in ways that support greater success in math, the senior portfolios and ultimately, in life for all our students.

3) Language Skills

As with Math skills, Reading and Language skills are critical for our students, who come to us with a wide range of affection for books. Similarly to Math (above), we track our students’ achievements based not only on MAP assessments, but on personal growth and improvement. Scores offer us not a way to compare to other students, but to compare each student to their past, and ensure progress is being made.