Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), an association responsible for accrediting many academic institutions on the West Coast, visited Loyola on Thursday, March 3, to renew its educational accreditation of Loyola High School.
This year’s visit, lasting only three days, was purposed in ensuring that Loyola was improving in the areas that WASC had recommended three years ago, according to Principal Frank Kozakowski.
The accreditation process requires Loyola to hand-craft a self-study that contains a progress report describing the steps it is using to improve in the areas that WASC said Loyola should improve on during its previous visit.
When visiting, the members of WASC assessed that the evidence was, in fact, seen all throughout the campus. The largest change since the last visit was the implementation of the new schedule this year, and the WASC team said that they were very interested in the transition from the old schedule to the one that Loyola is using this year.
According to English teacher and Self-Study Department Chairwoman Karen Jardine, the organization was very impressed with the strides Loyola was taking through this transition. The report that was composed at the end of the visit said that WASC was pleased with the work that went into making this schedule by describing how “all departments have worked hard to change the way they teach in terms of lesson planning.”
When describing the faculty and staff and their adjustment to the new schedule, WASC relayed the following information in its report: “From teachers having to reconstruct their lesson plans and staff members having to adjust work flows and all having to adjust their mindset, everyone has done an excellent job.”
The WASC report recommended that Loyola continue to glean as much information as possible about the changes instituted this year since a semester and a half is still a short amount of time to gather data about results by writing that “[Loyola should] gather feedback from appropriate stakeholder groups on the efficacy of the recent school changes.”
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