For the past two years, accreditation has been the focus of attention by the current Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, and others who believe that accreditors, in the words of Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education, should "make performance outcomes, including completion rates and student learning, the core of their assessment," develop frameworks that allow "comparisons among institutions regarding learning outcomes and other performance measures," and make "the findings of final reviews easily accessible to the public." Those proposals and the attempt to enforce them through new regulations have been widely viewed as unacceptable by the higher education community. Anticipating the new administration, now is the time to step back, take a deep breath, review some basic principles, and make recommendations for the future. The basic argument presented here is as follows: Regional accreditation is fundamentally sound and should not be harmed by abrupt regulatory changes. At the same time, understanding why accreditation has not met this Secretary's expectations can be helpful, because accreditation must address increased expectations for transparency, including information about student learning. Further, the federal system of "recognizing" accreditors, while imperfect, serves the public purpose of assuring satisfactory educational quality for purposes of making federal financial aid available to students. (Contains 10 resources.)