Reframing Accountability: Review of the Seal of Excelencia
Higher Ed Insight; Excelencia in Education
December 2025
Overview
Accountability is key for institutions of higher education to assess their impact, inform continuous improvement, and demonstrate value to students, their families, and society. Yet, accountability is too often defined by compliance and standard outcome measures such as enrollment and graduation rates. This definition and approach to accountability does not capture the full story of how an institution is intentionally serving its students.
This brief highlights how the Seal of Excelencia (Seal) expands the meaning of accountability beyond compliance toward intentionality and continuous improvement by integrating essential components of transformation into a comprehensive institutional strategy for serving Latino, and all, students.
Key Findings
Findings from surveys and interviews with institutions that engaged in the Seal process highlight its effectiveness as a catalyst for institutional transformation by:
Building capacity for accountability to improve outcomes for students. Institutions strengthened their ability to collect, disaggregate, and apply data to improve outcomes and identify inequities.
Removing institutional silos and fostering collaboration. Cross-functional teams formed to interpret data and align strategies, reducing silos.
Embedding data in institutional success practices. Institutions applied data to redesign programs, expand culturally responsive supports, and improve faculty and staff engagement.
Validating strategy and signaling intentionality and trust to the community served. Earning the Seal serves as an external affirmation of internal commitment, building credibility with the institution’s students, families, and communities.
Lessons for Reframing and Evolving Accountability
Three lessons drawn from the Seal of Excelencia offer a roadmap for evolving accountability in higher education:
Accounting for Institutional Readiness and Data Capacity: Accountability models should meet institutions where they are, accounting for institutions’ varying degrees of data capacity, knowledge, and resources.
Holistic Contextualized Accountability: Accountability models should be iterative and asset-based, grounded in both quantitative and qualitative data to capture a full understanding of institutional mission, culture, context, impact, and outcomes for students.
Tracking Momentum Through Longitudinal Data: Accountability models should use longitudinal data, such as five-year trends, to track momentum and year-to-year progress rather than stand-alone outcomes, and to sustain improvement efforts.
Policy Recommendations
The following recommendations outline actionable ways governing boards, accreditors, postsecondary data collection bodies, and Congress can apply lessons from the Seal of Excelencia to advance accountability.
Governing Boards
Promote the use of momentum trends (five years of data) for implementation and consideration of strategic plans for institutions.
Accreditors
Add a review of institutional momentum using five years of data in evaluation, as well as an articulated alignment between data, practices, and leadership (institutional plan) to show institutional effort for intentionally serving the students they enroll.
Postsecondary Data Collection Bodies (College Scorecard, etc.)
Include momentum measures for educational pathways to degree completion, and allow institutions to submit written summaries of their impact to complement other data provided.
Congress
Add criteria to the Title III and V programs of the Higher Education Act to detail institutional momentum measures of progress in key areas of the educational pathway that will be supported with the five-year institutional capacity investment.
Create a recognition program for institutions disproportionately enrolling and graduating low-income, first-generation students.
Policymakers can scale key elements of the Seal of Excelencia to demonstrate higher education’s value and support institutions’ continuous improvement to serve their students, families, and communities.
Suggested Citation:
McGuire, D., Clement, V., Labandera, E., Lucas, M., & Kirk, C. (December 2025). Reframing Accountability: Review of the Seal of Excelencia. Washington, D.C.: Higher Ed Insight and Excelencia in Education.
