School Self-Assessment (SSA) is a program of professional development that supports schools in improving teaching and learning through ongoing reflection and peer review. A school undertaking SSA involves its whole staff in a process of goal-setting regarding student learning, and sets in motion a continuous cycle of internal self-review and external peer review that moves the school closer to its goals.
School Self-Assessment was developed by the Academy
for Educational Development (AED), an independent, nonprofit organization
based in Washington D.C and New York, with over 40 years of experience
in the field of education. AED began the SSA project in Michigan in 1996
as part of Middle
Start, a middle-grades educational reform initiative, with funding
from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Prior to its launch, Alexandra Weinbaum, SSA’s project director,
investigated several self-assessment approaches in use nationwide.
This search led to the British school inspection approach,
documented by Thomas A. Wilson (1996) in Reaching
for a Better Standard: English School Inspection and the Dilemma of Accountability
for American Public Schools.
This approach was adapted by the New York State Department of Education
and implemented statewide as a voluntary program of peer reviews of schools
using the state’s compact for learning as well as a school’s
own goals as a framework for review. The New York adaptation of the British
approach is described by Jacqueline Ancess (1996) in Outside/Inside,
Inside/Outside: Developing and Implementing the School Quality Review.
