What is the WASC Accreditation Process?

 

 

Background:

·       The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is one of six regional associations that accredit public and private schools, colleges, and universities in the United States.

·       In May of 2002, Connecting Waters Charter School underwent the initial visitation by WASC. During this visit, the WASC team made four recommendations for school improvement and approved our school’s application for candidacy status.

·       As a candidate for WASC accreditation, Connecting Waters Charter School was given until June of 2006 to prepare for a visit where a WASC visitation team will review our school as a whole.

·       During this visit, the committee will review the school’s “self-study”. They will assess our school based on the WASC criteria. They will recommend a term of accreditation to the Accrediting commission.

·       This self-study has already begun and will finalize in March of 2005 when the visiting committee arrives to review our school.

What is the WASC Focus on Learning (FOL) accreditation process:

In simple terms, this process asks the whole school:

·       Who are you? Who do you say you are ( i.e. what is your mission, your vision of yourself)?

·       How are you doing? Are you accomplishing what you set out to do?

·       After seeing how well you are doing, how will you change to better accomplish your mission

The included documents and other WASC literature go into much greater detail about what the process is, how it can be organized, and how all members of the school community (AKA, stakeholders) can be included. This process and the document that is produced through it is also referred to as the self-study.

What this means for Connecting Waters Charter School:

 

Becoming a fully accredited school benefits our school in many ways:

• This accreditation demonstrates that our school has met (or exceeded) the expectations set forth by WASC and CDE.
• Universities and high schools will more readily accept our students’ academic credit.
• Most importantly, this accreditation sets our school up to continue the self-study process on an ongoing basis. .

 

We can see the accreditation process as a very positive thing for our school. It is not so much that we are being judged by an outside agency. More, the commission is like a consulting service supporting to really see ourselves and helping us to improve our school and it’s service to our student’s. Let’s get the most out of this process that will help us to know that we are doing the very best that we can do.