The Accrediting Commission for Schools, formerly known as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), appears likely to award El Camino High School with a new six-year term of full accreditation, according to Principal Daniel Lunt.
The news coincides with the 61st anniversary of El Camino High, which the school celebrated on March 16.
“We’re super excited to celebrate those 60 years,” said Lunt. “It’s a little bit delayed, because we had the pandemic last year, but we wanted a chance to get everybody together and celebrate the excellence that is El Camino.”
Accreditation is a seal of approval that serves as a mark of institutional quality and organizational coherence.
Schools enter into the process voluntarily in order to help improve the quality of their programs and operations through self-evaluation.
“We always felt we would be able to maintain our accreditation,” Lunt said. “It’s just what we really need to know is what areas do they see—are they in line with the areas that we’re working on for improvement and for strengths? And if not, that feedback can really help us to make adjustments and continue to improve.”
Schools applying for accreditation must typically lay out a series of strategic goals related to areas such as student learning and achievement, professional development, or collaboration between school administrators and staff and monitor their progress in reaching these milestones.
This is followed by periodic visits from a WASC evaluation team to assess things like student achievement; the capacity of the school to implement, monitor, and accomplish its strategic plan; how well the strategic plan targets resources to areas that most impact student learning; and information in the school’s own self-evaluation report.
The evaluation team will then make recommendations to grant one of three levels of accreditation to schools: full accreditation, probationary accreditation, or no accreditation.
Full accreditation is usually good for six years and is typically awarded when a school successfully demonstrates that it has the capacity, commitment, and competence to support high-quality student learning and ongoing school improvement.
“We always get praise from the accreditation committee about our students,” said Lunt, “and that comes from a great community of parents, and our teachers are top notch, and they really help our students shine.”
A letter with the decision of the Accrediting Commission for Schools concerning El Camino High’s accreditation status is expected in May.