Members of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, or WASC, visited Aragon from March 12 to March 14 as part of the school’s accreditation process.
Taking its place as a California Distinguished School, Aragon has an excellent school program. The WASC program, consisting of teacher- and student-led groups, guides schools into an ongoing self-improvement cycle that includes implementation, assessment and refinement of the school’s self-made action plan.
Throughout the years, Aragon has regularly met WASC’s highest standards, measured by the interval period between visits. Rigorous planning and actions, including goal-setting and discussion, by school staff, faculty and students must be taken in order to earn a near-perfect score.
“WASC provides a list of criteria that we use to measure our school against,” said Aragon WASC coordinator and English teacher Holly Estrada. “We look at it and develop some goals [for further improvement for the Aragon environment] and create action plans against that.”
Preparing for a visit is an 18-month process, where an extensive report is compiled, stating the school’s progress on goals previously set and its goals of improvement for the future. Lower scores require a visit within the next year, while excellent schools can earn up to a six-year gap before another visit.
“The co-facilitators are the ones who lead the meetings, and they are going to ask questions to see if we agree with what the report actually says and that we got the student’s voices heard,” Estrada said. “It’s basically a group of students, teachers and parents discussing Aragon’s action plan.”
According to the 2018 report, some of the action plans for the future hope to “improve student wellness and morale … streamline and strengthen communication for wellness, guidance and discipline,” “make the academic program more inclusive and inspiring by focusing on students’ career goals and interests and the many possible paths they may take to achieve those goals,” and more. Within these plans, there are several goals and action steps created to ensure that the overall plan is achieved.
A portfolio of Aragon groups, including the administration, teachers, students and parents, come together to prepare for the event.
“It’s really a collaborative effort by the whole school,” Estrada said.
The process includes compiling and organizing data on enrollment in special programs, AP classes and grade point average with breakdowns of ethnicity and gender. After analyzing the curated data, groups spend time creating effective action plans.
“There’s a diverse group of students that come together and give our input,” said junior Gianna Garcia, who is part of the student group involved in creating action plans.
Junior Alicia Braanemark is also a member of the student-led group.
“From my perspective, I want to make the [Aragon students] more involved in course selection,” Braanemark said. “We should have the influence on what classes we could pick from.”
Compiling a report and creating action plans allows for staff, faculty and students to focus on improvements.
“We’ve reported a lot of progress from WASC’s last visit,” Estrada said. “[There were] action plans like having an expanded role for the Leadership program, for which Ms. Perino invented Renaissance, and making activities which help us have more school spirit.”
Additionally, Aragon has developed a steady focus on health and wellness and provided a whole new division, including highly accessible health and wellness counselors open to the student body. Along with these improvements come new bridges to cross, which Aragon will encounter with optimism.
“We are trying to better the student-to-teacher connection in the Aragon environment,” Braanemark said.
Estrada explains the paramount reason for the WASC accreditation process.
“It’s really a great opportunity to take a step back from the daily grind of running the school,” she said. “[It helps us] take a real honest look at our school in all of its areas and take some time apart … to think about how can we really improve?”
