WASC

What is WASC? WASC stands for Western Association of Schools and Colleges and is one of the six accrediting organizations that give the "stamp of approval" to public and private schools, colleges and Universities.

I will take a quote from the WASC website to describe what the organization does:

"The greatest value of the WASC protocol is that it ensures equity and fairness to all students in all schools. Parents, teachers, staff members and students participate in a process that enables them to critically self examine their school plan, set their own goals and assess if their goals are reached for continuous improvement."

This past week, I volunteered to serve on a visiting committee. Usually a visiting committee consists of six members, but since the school I was visiting was small, our committee was three. The other two members of my committee were a former superintendent of a district south of San Jose and a current superintendent of a district on the Peninsula south of San Francisco.

Each school is required to produce a self-study that examines all aspects of the school. Being a teacher, my instinct is to limit the study to the curriculum. However, WASC wants all aspects of the school to be studied. This involves things like the financial pictures, the physical plant to even parent relations. Every aspect of a school is up for examination.

The committee's visit is to verify the school's self study and to provide a critical eye to see where things match the school's self study and where it doesn't. The committee meets with all the constituencies and visits classes and observes as much as can been seen in a short three day visit.

At the end of the first two days, Monday and Tuesday, the three of us sat down to report on our days and were given assignments to write up our observations.

The visiting committee's big task is to produce a report that is presented to the major stakeholders (that's a new word that has become part of my vocabulary as it is used throughout the WASC guidelines and instructions) at the end of the third day. This report, ours turned out to be 18 pages (typical), provides the school the observations we made and then in certain areas, provides commendations and recommendations.

The three of us, took the majority of the third day to write the report. We holed ourselves in my hotel room and cranked out the report. I don't think I've been under that much stress to get something done in years. I have to thank both my fellow committee members for keeping it together at the end. I was getting pretty snippy there.

The other huge task each committee must accomplish is to provide the WASC commission on the committee's opinion as to whether a school should be given a 6 year accreditation (meaning the school gets to go six years before going through the process again), a 6/3 (six years but must have a progress report and visit at the 3 year mark), a 3 year, 2 year, 1 year accreditation or deny the institution accreditation.

I will say that for my first experience serving as a visiting committee member, I went in with an open mind and really learned so much about what makes a school good and what things need to be in place for a school to be great. I saw just how complex a school community can be and how challenging it is to keep all the balls in the air while also trying to improve the school and meet the recommendations WASC requires you to do before the next accreditation.

The three day visit was informative and a ton of work. I think I am finally unwound from the committee work now that I'm three days removed from it. I will certainly serve WASC again, but I might want to do it every other year. Who knows.