Out of Commission

Over the last year or so, I've had ample opportunity to kibitz on the goings-on involving the Joint Commission International. This interesting organisation does accreditation for many hospitals worldwide, using standards that seem pretty rigorous and certainly work towards enhancing patient safety, security and survival. It's sufficiently well-known that is has a disputed Wikipedia page, which means it must have some sort of celebrity status such that people can make disputable or arguable claims about it.

But I'm not so much interested in the healthcare ramifications of JCI as in the idea that it might be possible to have something like that for schools. As long-time readers of this blog know, I've looked at fish-tanks and Petri dishes while researching education, and I have many ideas about what constitutes a good education or a good school.

The JCI, if I'm not wrong, sets ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED criteria for a hospital. They get extremely sharp healthcare people to come down, physically check random items, interview random people, run around all over the shop, and then write a report on how well your hospital did by those measureables.

I wish they did it for schools, because I can imagine some worthy objects of this fantastic evaluation strategy.