In January 2017, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) clarified to the APA’s CoA that an accreditation decision should be effective on the date an agency’s decision-making body makes the decision and cannot be retroactive. In order to comply with this requirement, the CoA proposed revisions to AOP Sections 8.6 D, 8.6 I and 8.6 P, effective date of a decision. Specifically, the proposed revisions change the effective date of a decision to award accreditation (either “on contingency” or “full”) and other nonappealable accreditation decisions to the date of adjournment of the CoA meeting in which the decision was made.
In accordance with the APA “Policies for Accreditation Governance” and the USDE regulations for notice and comment, the CoA made available the proposed revisions for a period of public review and comment. The CoA received and reviewed a total of six comments on the proposed revisions and as such, forwarded the revisions and the comments to both the Board of Educational Affairs (BEA) and the Board of Directors (BoD) for review and vote. In June, the BEA approved the proposed revisions, and at its August meeting, the BoD approved the revisions.
Accordingly, the revisions to Sections 8.6 D., 8.6 I and 8.6 P of the AOP will become effective Jan. 1, 2018. This change will impact programs that receive an initial accreditation decision after Jan. 1, 2018, regardless of the date in which a program commenced the accreditation process (application, self-study, site visit, etc.), or whether the program initiated the accreditation process under the Guidelines and Principles for Accreditation of Programs in Professional Psychology.
