Nancy Brownell | Director, Accrediting Commission for Schools, WASC
WASC mid-cycle and other progress reports and visits are intended to provide schools with time to assess their progress on areas for growth and goals toward continuous improvement through a clear and succinct analysis. As such, the progress report needs to be focused on analyzing how the school is implementing and monitoring strategies to increase student success without pictures and many pages of description without analysis of effectiveness.
In the section of the school’s progress report entitled, Progress on Implementation of the Schoolwide Action Plan, the school community is asked to analyze and report on the progress on the identified student learner and school needs and the implementation priorities of the schoolwide action plan since the last accreditation visit, explaining how the cited, relevant supporting evidence led to the conclusions on progress and most importantly, the impact of the school’s actions on student learning and well-being. It may help to think of the progress report as an “executive summary” of progress, effectiveness, and the impact on students, written in a thoughtful, short, and to the point style.