IS YOUR SCHOOL ACCREDITED?

Dr. Wendy Ghiora – Posting #47 – April 24, 2010

I just returned from serving on a WASC team, which evaluated a local high school in Los Angeles County. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is one of six regional accrediting associations in the United States. The Commission provides assistance to schools located in California, Hawaii, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and East Asia. WASC is the official agency that has the authority to grant accreditation to schools and colleges.

The following description is taken from the WASC Website:
Accreditation is a term that originally meant trustworthiness in its middle French, Old Italian usage. The original purpose of accreditation in the United States was designed to encourage the standardization of secondary school programs, primarily to ensure for the benefit of colleges and universities that graduating students had mastered a particular body of knowledge. However, today the process developed by the Accrediting Commission for Schools, Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), involves a dual purpose that continues the expectation that schools must be worthy of the trust placed in them to provide high quality learning opportunities, but with the added requirement that they clearly demonstrate that they are about the critical business of continual self-improvement.

Ultimately, the accreditation process is all about fostering excellence in the elementary, secondary, adult, postsecondary and supplementary education programs we accredit. Our fundamental cause involves helping schools meaningfully create the highest quality learning experience they can envision for all students. It is WASC's consistent purpose to professionally support schools in creating for themselves a clear vision of what they desire their students to know and be able to do and then to ensure that efficient and relevant systems are in place that predictably result in the fulfillment of those expectations for every child.

The capacity of any organization to improve is directly related to its ability to recognize, acknowledge, and act on its identified strengths and limitations. The accreditation process is a vehicle that enables schools to improve student learning and school performance based on an analysis of those strengths and limitations. Participating schools must meet rigorous, research-based standards that reflect the essential elements of a quality and effective school, but again, must also be able to demonstrate engagement in as well as capacity to provide continuous school improvement.

The school I visited was an alternative high school. I would like to make two recommendations to my readers:

1. Volunteer to serve on a WASC Committee; or if you live in a different state, join the accreditation committee that serves your area. It is the very best, free professional development you could ask for. I learn so much from each school I observe as well as from the other members of the team. You are given the opportunity to help improve the education of both the students and staff of a school as well as receiving new knowledge and ideas you may not have been able to acquire anywhere else.

2. Thank someone you know who works in an alternative high school. The teachers in these schools are largely unnoticed for the enormous service they are doing for our society and for our country. They use their patience, care and of course their teaching skills to make sure these students (who couldn’t make it in a “traditional high school,”) succeed. If it were not for the dedicated staff at these schools, most of the kids would not graduate and lead successful lives. Instead, they would probably be dead or in jail. The students and parents of the school expressed gratitude for the help and guidance given their students. I, for one commend these schools and their dedicated staff.
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I am very excited to announce the release of my first published book: Unleashing the Student's "I Can!" It is a compilation of true stories of some very cool adventures I've had with students while teaching at various schools. The message is to never give up on a child. There's always a way. Just find the gift or talent each student has that is just waiting to be "unleashed." Hopefully, it will inspire.
You can purchase the book through the publisher at this link: http://www.publishamerica.net/product89724.html