Policies & Procedures Cover The Policies and Procedures contain two important supplements and complements to the Standards of Accreditation of the Commission on Accrediting (Commission) of The Association of Theological Schools (the Association, or ATS). The Commission Policies describe general policies for achieving and maintaining accreditation, for changing a school’s scope of accreditation through substantive changes, and for how the Board of Commissioners (Board) operates, including how member schools receive and respond to Board decisions. The Board Procedures describe specific procedures for how the Board implements and interprets those more general policies of the membership.

The Commission Policies and Procedures were thoroughly reviewed and revised as part of the redevelopment of the Standards. The new Policies and Procedures is the result of the Redevelopment Task Force’s “year of listening” in 2018-2019 that engaged more than 700 ATS participants from nearly 200 member schools. Regarding accreditation policies and procedures, the overwhelming desire was for greater simplicity and more streamlined processes for various accrediting functions. Some examples of simpler and more streamlined accreditation processes that were adopted in June 2020 include the following:

- simplifying the Policies and Procedures by eliminating redundancies and reducing paperwork
- reducing the number of changes that require petitions for approval (replacing many with simple notifications to staff)
- eliminating all petition fees
- replacing notations with warnings to be consistent with other accrediting agencies
- allowing warnings (notations) to followed by probation instead of automatic withdrawal of accreditation
- providing two ways for members to "challenge" Board decisions: request a Board review or appeal to Appeals Panel
- providing more flexible pathways to initial accreditation

The current version of the Policies and Procedures can always be found on the ATS website; an annotated draft of the (then-proposed) document from June 2020 (including explanatory notes) can be found at this link (but be sure to reference the website version, not this annotated version, in any petitions or correspondence with the Board, as this annotated version is no longer being updated). Commission staff are more than happy to help schools interpret these documents.

In addition, the Commission on Accrediting has a set of Commission Bylaws that describe, among other things, the Commission membership and the Board of Commissioners. The Commission membership approved several revisions to the Commission Bylaws in June 2020. The Bylaws can always be found on the ATS website.