The relationship between principals' perceptions of the policies and standards of the North Central Association and the acceptability of voluntary accreditation among public elementary school principals in Indiana

The study was designed to investigate the relationship between the perceptions of public elementary school principals concerning the procedures for the voluntary accreditation of elementary schools by regional accrediting associations and how acceptable the idea of voluntary accreditation was to the same principals. Section I of the survey instrument developed for the study, "Survey of Perceptions about Voluntary Elementary School Accreditation," was a request for demographic information about the respondents. Section II was designed to assess the amount of congruence between the perceptions of the principals concerning North Central Association requirements for elementary school accreditation and the actual requirements as set forth in "Policies and. Standards for the Approval of Elementary Schools." In Section III, the respondents indicated where they would place themselves on a five-point scale in regard to each of ten statements expressing positive attitudes toward the voluntary accreditation of elementary schools. The first and last statements in Section III expressed a positive attitude toward involvement in the accreditation process. The other eight of the ten statements identified benefits which might be derived from accreditation. The five-point scale ranged from "strongly disagree" at one end of the scale to "strongly agree" at the other. It was postulated that there would be a strong positive correlation between perceptions of accreditation that were congruent with the North Central Association Policies and Standards and positive attitudes toward accreditation.Other related questions were also investigated. Is the relationship between principals' perceptions of North Central Association Policies and Standards and their acceptance of voluntary accreditation related to such other factors as geographical location, school size by enrollment, age, level of teaching experience, years of experience as elementary principals, years of experience in their present assignments, educational level attained, experience in number of school corporations, or previous experience with the North Central Association?The population for the study was the 1,345 public elementary school principals in Indiana. From the population, a random sample of 273 subjects, stratified by eight geographical districts and five categories of school size, was drawn. Usable returns were received from 14.8 of the 273 subjects, 54-.2 percent of the sample.Relationships between the main variables of the study, congruency of principals' perceptions of accreditation with actual North Central Association requirements and acceptability of the concept to the subjects, were tested statistically with Pearson product moment coefficients of correlation. The relationships between the main variables and each level of the potentially monitoring variables noted above were also tested with Pearson correlation coefficients.The main hypothesis of the study, stated in null form to facilitate testing, was rejected at the .01 level of statistical significance (r = +.391 and +.380). A positive relationship not due to chance appeared to exist between the extent to which the principals' perceptions of accreditation procedures were congruent with the actual procedures defined by the North Central Association and the acceptability of voluntary accreditation to the principals. None of the other eighteen hypotheses, which were concerned with relationships between each of the main variables of congruency and acceptability with each of nine potentially monitoring variables, were rejected. A few statistically significant relationships were discovered between some levels of the variables which were investigated for monitorial relationships and the congruency and acceptability measures; but, since statistical significance did not occur consistently among the various levels of each of the potentially monitorial relationships, the null hypotheses relating to these relationships were not rejected.Thesis (D. Ed.