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Berkeley High School staff arrived back on campus Friday for the first of three “staff development” days, two of which will focus on formulating a response to the criticisms leveled against the school in a recent report by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. 

WASC is responsible for accrediting schools throughout the state of California. It grants accreditation for terms of anywhere from one to six years, with short term accreditations coming when a WASC visiting committee is dissatisfied with a particular school’s progress. 

Berkeley High received a two year accreditation in 1999, and a one and a half year extension this spring, after a WASC committee found the school’s progress in key areas to be “at best spotty and fragmented.”  

The WASC committee identified 11 areas where the school must make significant improvements before its next visit, scheduled for October of 2002.  

The WASC committee has consistently praised Berkeley High for its dedicated teaching staff, rich array of electives and standardized test scores well above the state average. But it has criticized the school for its high failure rate among minority students, the lack of clear, measurable goals for what each student will learn by graduation and the apparent absence of a process for making decisions about school policy.  

Other areas of concern include a perception that the school does not have consistent policies for dealing with truancy and student discipline, that it lacks a plan for increasing the use of technology in instruction and that the teaching staff has difficulty collaborating due to existence of “special interest agendas” among various groups of teachers. 

None of this is news to Berkeley High teachers. The WASC committee’s finding are based, in large measure, on interviews with Berkeley High staff.  

The high school has worked to address the problem areas in recent years, with more success in some areas than others.  

To address the achievement gap, the school created a Student Learning Center that provides tutoring, study skills programs, academic enrichment, counseling and other support for all Berkeley High students. But the center focuses particularly on those who are at risk of failing classes. 

This year a new truancy policy will go into effect at the school, setting strict guidelines for what happens when students repeatedly miss class. And a new program begun last year is working to address the WASC committee’s concern that there are two few minorities in Berkeley High’s advanced classes. Known as the AP Project, the program actively recruits minorities for high level classes and gives them extra academic support outside of class to help ensure their success. 

One area where progress has proved illusive is the formulation of school-wide goals for students learning, or, in WASC lingo, “Expected Student Learning Results.” While some individual departments were able to come up with ESLRs for their subject areas, there was no consensus. 

Last fall, a group of a parents and teachers, taking over where previous efforts had left off, came up with one page of ESLRs for the school. On Friday, Berkeley High staff spent half a day in department meetings devising assignments that could be used to measure students progress with the ESLRs. To obtain the goal that each student be able to speak confidently and demonstrate a clear command of language, for example, one group of English teachers suggested students transform an essay into an oral presentation. 

On Monday, to continue to address the other areas of concern identified by the WASC committee, Berkeley High staff will divide into 10 focus groups made up of teachers from different departments, parent volunteers and other high school staff. Meeting once a month for the rest of the year, each focus group will look at specific areas of weakness identified by WASC. 

The timeline, according to Berkeley High Vice Principal Mary Ann Valles, calls for each focus group to submit “action plans” by the end of the first semester, so the school can begin to implement those plans during the second semester. When the WASC committee returns in the fall of next year, it will expect to see that the school has taken clear steps to deal with problem areas, Valles said. 

During the Friday sessions, there was some frustration among Berkeley High staff because they were being asked to give up some much staff development time to plan for the next WASC visit, when they could have used the time to review their own lesson plans for the year ahead. Some wondered when and how the ESLRs they were working so hard to develop would ever be used. 

But Valles said the ESLR discussions, and the focus group meetings planned for the rest of the year, represent a unique opportunity for Berkeley High staff to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t and come up with very specific solutions for problems. 

“We have to understand that WASC is a process that helps us,” Valles said. “It’s just a tool for self-evaluation and improvement.” 

To make the WASC process as effective as possible, Valles is encouraging parents, students and community members to become involved in the focus group discussions. To volunteer to join one of the groups, contact Valles at 644-4566.