The move to get a new accreditation plan in place could take a decade, while the state’s 2.1 million community college students look for guidance in a complex system.

The fatal action for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges was its challenge to City College of San Francisco. The commission in 2012 began raising concerns about financial and governance practices at the college and at one point threatened to revoke the college’s accreditation, landing the two parties in court.

City College has acknowledged its precarious financial position and its revolving door of administrators. The school has pruned expenses and tightened its finances, according to a bond filing issued earlier this year.

Which leaves the state with a black eye in terms of accreditation of community colleges. Is the accreditation commission being punished for doing its job? Or was it unfairly severe in its application of standards?

Need for Accreditation

Accreditation is crucial for most institutions as it is required to access federal student loan money.

The state’s community colleges have seen a decline in enrollment over the past five years and faced an $18 million revenue decline in 2014, although state legislation propped up the San Francisco Community College District — of which the City College is part of — through additional funding last year.

The commission has been on the radar of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors for over a year.

In a report issued by a review committee from the community colleges board, the fate of the accreditation board was sealed.

From the report:

“Between 2009 and 2013 the ACCJC issued 143 sanctions out of the 269 accreditation actions it took. This sanction rate is approximately 53 percent, compared to approximately 12 percent sanction rates within the other six regional accreditors. The quantity and frequency of sanctions issued by the ACCJC, in conjunction with other controversial actions and practices of this accreditor, have led to frequent calls for reform of the accrediting process from member institutions of the ACCJC.”

The accreditation commission responded with a four–page announcement of new practices and noted that as of 2014, there were 30 percent fewer benchmarks required for approval.

“The new standards will be the basis for comprehensive institutional evaluations for reaffirmation of accreditation beginning spring, 2016,” a spokesman for the commission said.

The commission also announced it would host annual conferences for schools to receive input and answer questions about the accreditation process. The first conference is to be held in October 2016.

RELATED – State agency struggling to police for-profit colleges

The commission is part of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of six regional groups in the U.S. that are charged with ensuring higher education institutions adhere to standards that begin at the federal level. The accreditors are overseen by administrators at the U.S. Department of Education and a board called the National Advisory Committee on Accreditation and Institutional Eligibility.

In addition to angering the state community college board of governors, the accreditation commission in California has drawn the ire of teachers unions and their powerful allies. The California Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit against the commission to keep the San Francisco City College open and registered a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education against the commission.

The American Federation of Teachers said the commission has “failed to focus on improving learning and academic achievement.”

Democratic U.S. Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Jackie Speier and Anna Eshoo called the ACCJC’s actions “outrageous.”

The commission is accused in one complaint of “extensive financial and political relationships with advocacy organizations and private foundations representing for‐profit colleges and powerful student lender interests.”

The commission accepted a $450,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education, a group that has endeavored to change community college education and create a more universal accreditation system. Some onlookers have noted what they call the libertarian roots of Lumina.

But the practice of accreditation stems from federal regulation, which has increased in recent years. Community colleges in the U.S. collectively spend up to $6 billion to keep in compliance, according to a Vanderbilt University study. The study also listed 29 categories that colleges and universities are subject to monitoring and reporting.

Community colleges are subject to review every six years.

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com.

She has taken a relatively complacent attitude toward the crucial next six months of legislative activity, including when Republicans take over control of the U.S. Senate in January.

She has refused to anoint a successor, and has expanded her inner circle of allies and operators only under pressure. Convinced that Democrats’ center of power in the House remains in California, she has charted a course that Democrats on the East Coast — especially in the Senate — have lost faith in.

But because of her longstanding power, her unmatched fundraising prowess and her likability within the party, Pelosi has been able to coast when it comes to connecting policy together with a compelling political message.

West Coast Offense

Pelosi’s California-centric approach to leadership has given Democrats in the rest of the country, and outside her reach in the Senate, reason to register some concerns. In the wake of November’s elections, there was some talk of considering new leadership. But it never amounted to a serious challenge, in large part because no Democrat was willing to step forward.

Nevertheless, as CalWatchdog.com previously reported, Hill observers took notice of Pelosi’s loss in an important battle to secure a plum committee position for a close California ally. Because of strenuous objections from the Congressional Black Caucus, Pelosi was unable to skirt traditional seniority privileges in her quest to make Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., the ranking member of the influential Energy and Commerce Committee.

Instead, the position went to Rep. Frank Pallone, D-NJ, backed by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

Although the party leadership and membership alike were quick to paper over the scuffle, the episode appeared to reinforce a growing concern about Pelosi’s priorities, relative to those of the increasingly embattled and outnumbered Democrats in Congress.

Competing worldviews

Despite the almost uniformly liberal principles of the Hill’s most consequential Democrats, disagreements with Pelosi over how to head toward the 2016 elections have revealed competing political worldviews within the party.

In a detailed analysis and interview, the Washington Post’s Paul Kane reported Pelosi “is facing her most uneasy moments in her 12 years as the top Democrat in the House. Reeling from their Election Day drubbing, House Democrats are still wondering exactly what went wrong and what they need to do to fix it.”

In an echo of the controversy over Eshoo, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, D-Md. — a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus — told Kane of “a lot going on around here, privately, about the need for us to sit down and talk about the need to put a strategy together.”

Yet Pelosi’s approach to reassessing Democrats’ fortunes has focused on digging into election data and doing a better job of targeting blocs of voters. While her opponents on the East Coast favor crafting a coherent, overarching message, especially on the economy.

Pelosi told Kane that soul-searching and pitch-crafting is useless “unless you have data, unless you have analytics,” waving away suggestions that “there’s going to be some overarching national message that’s repeated and echoed.”

Economy

Criticism from Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., and Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., meanwhile, included charges that Democrats under Pelosi had said too little about the economy’s relative recovery and not enough about how the national party imagined it could be further improved.

At the same time, Pelosi’s standing in the Senate has fallen precipitously. Kane called the relationship a “deep chill.” That was confirmed this week as Pelosi took heat from Senate Democrats for failing to challenge a provision in the latest House budget deal that would reinstate taxpayer backing for derivatives trading under certain circumstances.

“At the end of the day, [Republican House Speaker John] Boehner needs Democrats in the House to push this to get it through, and Pelosi holds the strings to getting Democrats to vote for the bill,” one Democrat staffer told The Huffington Post.

January’s ascendance of Republicans to majority status in the Senate will challenge Pelosi’s locus of power even more.

Even more, however, she has emerged as a symbol of how heavily Democrats rely on their California delegation. The Democrats’ California representatives — much like the party’s two U.S. senators from California, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer — have combined legislative experience with liberal bona fides to a degree not often present among officeholders from other states.

Although Democrats have long been aware of Pelosi’s weaknesses as a leader, their options for a pivot away from her — and their base of power in California — have been few. After yet another disappointing election this month, some Democrats began to question the wisdom of retaining Pelosi as their party’s leader in the House.

Not only had she failed to win control of the House, Pelosi had seen her own approval ratings erode badly over time. In the most recent Rasmussen poll measuring Pelosi’s unfavorability, she sank to a level lower than both Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate majority leader until Republicans take over in January; and current Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio — both reviled by members of the opposite political party.

Among likely voters, 58 percent expressed an unfavorable opinion of Pelosi; 41 percent described their view as very unfavorable. Just 31 percent gave her a favorable rating; and 9 percent a very favorable one.

Nevertheless, no Democrat conveyed interest in replacing Pelosi. As Jack Pitney observed at the Christian Science Monitor, Pelosi was protected from a challenge, in part, because house minority leader traditionally has been a difficult and unpleasant job. With Pelosi’s fundraising prowess and political ambition still going strong, Democrats faced little incentive to replace her through a divisive, and perhaps embarrassing, internal fight.

The power broker

In fact, Pelosi herself has already shown little hesitancy in using her own clout to push favorites and allies into what positions of power she could manage. Most recently, a controversy over who would fill the ranking member’s post on the Energy and Commerce Committee put Pelosi’s California-centric approach on full display.

The seat was opened up by the retirement of the committee’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who was next in seniority. Next in line was Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who boasted the backing of Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

But Pelosi favored Rep. Anna Eshoo, another Californian and a “fiercely loyal friend,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Surprising Democrats, the Chronicle reported, Pelosi sent out a total of three letters pushing Eshoo for the post, ruffling feathers among those who support the seniority system — including “several members of the Congressional Black Caucus,” which has relied on seniority to secure leadership positions.

Compounding the drama, Pelosi flexed her muscle to ensure Eshoo went into the party vote for the post with as great an advantage as possible.

Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. — a Pallone supporter and currently pregnant — became unable to attend a caucus meeting key to Pallone’s bid against Eshoo. But Pelosi opposed an effort led by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz, D-Fla., to permit women with pregnancies to vote in caucus by proxy. In a show of California Democrats’ power and unity, caucus chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., stood with Pelosi.

Pelosi was unable, however, to overcome the influence of the Congressional Black Caucus — one group with perhaps even more influence, under certain circumstances, than California Democrats. On the strength of CBC support, Pallone won out over Eshoo.

But as National Journal reported, Hoyer refused to describe Pallone’s victory as a “personal” one for him. And Eshoo waved away any suggestion the outcome hinted at a lack of confidence in Pelosi’s leadership.

High hopes

All told, Democrats have determined to forge ahead with Pelosi and her allies, despite the bumps in the political road.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times shortly after her Tuesday re-election as Democratic Leader, Pelosi argued the path to recovering control of the House ran through Democrats’ clout in California — and, specifically, her own.

“Thirty-nine members from one state — that’s more than some of the regions that we cover, much less any one state,” she said, referring to the number of Democrats Californians sent to the House this year.

“I take great pride in the fact that when we won the House in 2006, it all began in California.” For now, Democrats are sticking with her as they work to win the House in 2016.