Post by Moses on Nov 24, 2005 9:18:25 GMT -5
November 23 - 29, 2005
[The Stress Test
Choose all that apply: (a) The WASL was intended to improve schools and pupil performance. (b) It's become an unhealthy obsession among teachers, parents, and students. (c) The WASL inspires alarming anxiety among 9-year-olds. (d) It's actually stultifying public education.
by Nina Shapiro
....The WASL has swept the state education system like a fever, an obsession, a madness. "Where can you go in the state of Washington and not hear 'WASL'?" asks Washington Middle School teacher Debra Tarpley. In anticipation of the legislative session beginning in January, the Washington Education Association, the state teachers union, hired a pollster to conduct focus groups with teachers to find out what issues most concerned them. "They talked about the WASL," says WEA President Charles Hasse. "He [the pollster] then asked, 'What else?' Then they talked about the WASL some more."
"I dream about the WASL," says Brittany Morris, a sophomore at Rainier Beach High School in Seattle. Tenth-graders there are expected to attend a weekly after-school WASL prep class, and there are "WASL Wednesdays," when every class introduces some kind of practice for the test.
The pressure is greater than ever. This year's sophomores will be the first class required to pass the reading, writing, and math sections of the 10th grade WASL before they can graduate from high school. Last year, just 42 percent of the state's sophomores passed. At Rainier Beach, an overwhelmingly poor and minority school, just 7 percent passed. So the state faces the possibility that thousands of kids, perhaps virtually the entire senior class of some schools, will be left at graduation time in 2008 with no place to go. Even more kids will likely be in that position in 2010, when students will be required to pass the 10th-grade science WASL, as well.
The state will release this year's results in June. "I'm thinking already about what I'm going to say to my constituents the morning the test scores come out," one state legislator told Bellevue schools Superintendent Mike Riley, who declined to name the lawmaker. Legislators, who put the WASL in motion with a landmark education reform bill in 1993, have reason to fear a rebellion. This fall, in a survey the state teachers union conducted of its membership, 72 percent said they opposed having the WASL as a graduation requirement.
The WASL is designed in large part to hold teachers accountable, so it might seem natural that they chafe against the system. Even more striking, therefore, is the discontent among parents. The state Parent Teacher Association recently surveyed its 146,000 members about how they felt about the WASL. What came back was an outpouring of passionate testimony against the WASL, much of it relating personal experiences. From urban Seattle to wealthy Eastside suburbs to rural Eastern Washington, parents told disturbing tales about the way the WASL had become the be-all and end-all of their children's schooling, producing crushing pressure and a narrowed curriculum. A representative comment from one Seattle mom: "I'm just angry about the whole thing and feel hostage to the system."
In early October, the state PTA, not usually associated with radical positions, determined that it would lobby the Legislature to delay using the WASL as a graduation requirement and to seek "multiple measures of student achievement," not just the one test.
"The Legislature is going to go full-bore on this," says former Gov. Booth Gardner. He's doing his best to make sure of it. Presiding over the state from 1985 to 1993, Gardner, a Democrat, got the education reform [sic] movement started. Over the past year, however, he says he has heard a constant din about the WASL that has convinced him that something has gone wrong with the effort to raise standards. Acknowledging the all-consuming pressure that the test has wrought, he says, "I don't think anybody anticipated it."[He sounds like Sleeza Rice-- they were warned, they turned a deaf ear, and imposed their neocon ideology on the American people, ruining millions and millions of lives] Gardner looks at the alarming number of kids likely to end their senior year without a diploma and warns, "We're headed for a train wreck."
He says he spoke to Gov. Christine Gregoire about this and she said, in Gardner's words, "Go fix it." So Gardner assembled an ad hoc group of about 50 influential players in education, including the chairs of the legislative education committees [dictatorship- people are not consulted], to work on a proposal to bring to Olympia in coming months.
Even some people who are presumed to favor staying the WASL course want a change in direction. Take Bellevue schools Superintendent Riley. One of the most admired superintendents in the state, he has led the charge to make college-level Advanced Placement classes part of every high-school student's curriculum in his district. He is all about raising standards. Yet, he says, "You don't take a week of kids' time and make that determine whether or not they get a diploma."
Riley also expresses disbelief that no system is ready to deal with the students who will be left in limbo once they fail. Students are allowed four retakes, and if they fail twice, they are supposed to undergo alternative assessments to demonstrate what they know. The state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is working on two pilot alternatives: One would require students to compile a "collection of evidence" of work, and another would allow them to use a high grade-point average to offset a substandard WASL score. The Legislature, however, hasn't signed off on those alternatives. Nor has the Legislature or OSPI released remediation plans for those unable to achieve a diploma by any method. OSPI says it has developed five-week remedial teaching modules that it will unveil at a January conference, but those constitute short-term assistance designed for those who are close to passing, not those who need the most help.
"This is like Keystone Cops. That's very high stakes," Riley says, "and you don't even know what's going to happen next. . . . If I was a parent, I'd say, 'Are you kidding me?'"
Molly O'Connor wants everybody to take a step back. "We got so caught up with WASL, WASL, WASL, we've kind of forgotten about why we're doing this," she says. O'Connor is a spokesperson for Partnership for Learning, a nonprofit supported by the state's biggest companies, including Microsoft and Boeing. The group is the WASL's biggest cheerleader aside from state officials. [And what Gates and Boeing want to impose on public education is far more important than what the American people want] In the past few months, the partnership has mailed a series of glossy fliers to students' families (they got the names and addresses from school districts), as well as to political and media leaders, in an apparent attempt to bolster support for the test. "I can pass the WASL," reads the front of one postcard, next to a picture of a student.
O'Connor responds to criticism of the test by saying, "The train wreck has already happened. We keep sending kids out there totally unprepared." Jean Carpenter, the state PTA's executive director and a WASL critic, concedes the point: "We helped pass education reform; we had kids graduating who couldn't read and write." [Note that this likely plant by the corps is simply mouthing a slogan-- so much for the PTA, handmaiden of the bureaucracy] Prominent among them were poor, minority children.
Education reform put superintendents, principals, and teachers on notice: They would have to ensure that all students attain a certain level of proficiency by graduation, and this would be demonstrably measured with a test, what later became the WASL. Eight years later, the federal government weighed in with No Child Left Behind. That act requires states to use their own tests, in our case the WASL, to assess kids in third through eighth grades. Consequently, an even more extensive testing schedule will go into effect this year, adding to the current regimen of tests given primarily in fourth, seventh, and 10th grades. Most significantly, No Child Left Behind mandates that states disaggregate test scores to make sure that minorities and other groups are achieving. States that don't perform up to snuff face possible loss of federal money. That has put a fire under state bureaucrats. Note, however, that the state, not the feds, made the WASL a graduation requirement, lighting a match under students, too.
While such high stakes ignite controversy, there is enormous appeal to the idea of shaking up the status quo, to insist that historically neglected and underperforming students achieve. "We need to implode the system," says Seattle Urban League President James Kelly, a WASL supporter. "It's about high expectations." For those who complain, including African Americans and others who lament the high failure rate, he has a rejoinder: "The bar has been raised. Get over it." [Does this guy have kids?]
Ideally, this would be done with a rigorous curriculum that just happened to have a test associated with it. The most important part of education reform, according to boosters, is not the WASL but new academic standards that lay out for teachers the skills their students should be learning. "It's the skills, not the scores," says Kim Schmanke, a spokesperson for state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson. She says Bergeson has challenged herself lately to not even say "WASL." Says O'Connor of the Partnership for Learning: "If you're using the standards and using them creatively, there shouldn't be any cram sessions for the WASL."
[The Stress Test
Choose all that apply: (a) The WASL was intended to improve schools and pupil performance. (b) It's become an unhealthy obsession among teachers, parents, and students. (c) The WASL inspires alarming anxiety among 9-year-olds. (d) It's actually stultifying public education.
by Nina Shapiro
....The WASL has swept the state education system like a fever, an obsession, a madness. "Where can you go in the state of Washington and not hear 'WASL'?" asks Washington Middle School teacher Debra Tarpley. In anticipation of the legislative session beginning in January, the Washington Education Association, the state teachers union, hired a pollster to conduct focus groups with teachers to find out what issues most concerned them. "They talked about the WASL," says WEA President Charles Hasse. "He [the pollster] then asked, 'What else?' Then they talked about the WASL some more."
"I dream about the WASL," says Brittany Morris, a sophomore at Rainier Beach High School in Seattle. Tenth-graders there are expected to attend a weekly after-school WASL prep class, and there are "WASL Wednesdays," when every class introduces some kind of practice for the test.
The pressure is greater than ever. This year's sophomores will be the first class required to pass the reading, writing, and math sections of the 10th grade WASL before they can graduate from high school. Last year, just 42 percent of the state's sophomores passed. At Rainier Beach, an overwhelmingly poor and minority school, just 7 percent passed. So the state faces the possibility that thousands of kids, perhaps virtually the entire senior class of some schools, will be left at graduation time in 2008 with no place to go. Even more kids will likely be in that position in 2010, when students will be required to pass the 10th-grade science WASL, as well.
The state will release this year's results in June. "I'm thinking already about what I'm going to say to my constituents the morning the test scores come out," one state legislator told Bellevue schools Superintendent Mike Riley, who declined to name the lawmaker. Legislators, who put the WASL in motion with a landmark education reform bill in 1993, have reason to fear a rebellion. This fall, in a survey the state teachers union conducted of its membership, 72 percent said they opposed having the WASL as a graduation requirement.
The WASL is designed in large part to hold teachers accountable, so it might seem natural that they chafe against the system. Even more striking, therefore, is the discontent among parents. The state Parent Teacher Association recently surveyed its 146,000 members about how they felt about the WASL. What came back was an outpouring of passionate testimony against the WASL, much of it relating personal experiences. From urban Seattle to wealthy Eastside suburbs to rural Eastern Washington, parents told disturbing tales about the way the WASL had become the be-all and end-all of their children's schooling, producing crushing pressure and a narrowed curriculum. A representative comment from one Seattle mom: "I'm just angry about the whole thing and feel hostage to the system."
In early October, the state PTA, not usually associated with radical positions, determined that it would lobby the Legislature to delay using the WASL as a graduation requirement and to seek "multiple measures of student achievement," not just the one test.
"The Legislature is going to go full-bore on this," says former Gov. Booth Gardner. He's doing his best to make sure of it. Presiding over the state from 1985 to 1993, Gardner, a Democrat, got the education reform [sic] movement started. Over the past year, however, he says he has heard a constant din about the WASL that has convinced him that something has gone wrong with the effort to raise standards. Acknowledging the all-consuming pressure that the test has wrought, he says, "I don't think anybody anticipated it."[He sounds like Sleeza Rice-- they were warned, they turned a deaf ear, and imposed their neocon ideology on the American people, ruining millions and millions of lives] Gardner looks at the alarming number of kids likely to end their senior year without a diploma and warns, "We're headed for a train wreck."
He says he spoke to Gov. Christine Gregoire about this and she said, in Gardner's words, "Go fix it." So Gardner assembled an ad hoc group of about 50 influential players in education, including the chairs of the legislative education committees [dictatorship- people are not consulted], to work on a proposal to bring to Olympia in coming months.
Even some people who are presumed to favor staying the WASL course want a change in direction. Take Bellevue schools Superintendent Riley. One of the most admired superintendents in the state, he has led the charge to make college-level Advanced Placement classes part of every high-school student's curriculum in his district. He is all about raising standards. Yet, he says, "You don't take a week of kids' time and make that determine whether or not they get a diploma."
Riley also expresses disbelief that no system is ready to deal with the students who will be left in limbo once they fail. Students are allowed four retakes, and if they fail twice, they are supposed to undergo alternative assessments to demonstrate what they know. The state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is working on two pilot alternatives: One would require students to compile a "collection of evidence" of work, and another would allow them to use a high grade-point average to offset a substandard WASL score. The Legislature, however, hasn't signed off on those alternatives. Nor has the Legislature or OSPI released remediation plans for those unable to achieve a diploma by any method. OSPI says it has developed five-week remedial teaching modules that it will unveil at a January conference, but those constitute short-term assistance designed for those who are close to passing, not those who need the most help.
"This is like Keystone Cops. That's very high stakes," Riley says, "and you don't even know what's going to happen next. . . . If I was a parent, I'd say, 'Are you kidding me?'"
Molly O'Connor wants everybody to take a step back. "We got so caught up with WASL, WASL, WASL, we've kind of forgotten about why we're doing this," she says. O'Connor is a spokesperson for Partnership for Learning, a nonprofit supported by the state's biggest companies, including Microsoft and Boeing. The group is the WASL's biggest cheerleader aside from state officials. [And what Gates and Boeing want to impose on public education is far more important than what the American people want] In the past few months, the partnership has mailed a series of glossy fliers to students' families (they got the names and addresses from school districts), as well as to political and media leaders, in an apparent attempt to bolster support for the test. "I can pass the WASL," reads the front of one postcard, next to a picture of a student.
O'Connor responds to criticism of the test by saying, "The train wreck has already happened. We keep sending kids out there totally unprepared." Jean Carpenter, the state PTA's executive director and a WASL critic, concedes the point: "We helped pass education reform; we had kids graduating who couldn't read and write." [Note that this likely plant by the corps is simply mouthing a slogan-- so much for the PTA, handmaiden of the bureaucracy] Prominent among them were poor, minority children.
Education reform put superintendents, principals, and teachers on notice: They would have to ensure that all students attain a certain level of proficiency by graduation, and this would be demonstrably measured with a test, what later became the WASL. Eight years later, the federal government weighed in with No Child Left Behind. That act requires states to use their own tests, in our case the WASL, to assess kids in third through eighth grades. Consequently, an even more extensive testing schedule will go into effect this year, adding to the current regimen of tests given primarily in fourth, seventh, and 10th grades. Most significantly, No Child Left Behind mandates that states disaggregate test scores to make sure that minorities and other groups are achieving. States that don't perform up to snuff face possible loss of federal money. That has put a fire under state bureaucrats. Note, however, that the state, not the feds, made the WASL a graduation requirement, lighting a match under students, too.
While such high stakes ignite controversy, there is enormous appeal to the idea of shaking up the status quo, to insist that historically neglected and underperforming students achieve. "We need to implode the system," says Seattle Urban League President James Kelly, a WASL supporter. "It's about high expectations." For those who complain, including African Americans and others who lament the high failure rate, he has a rejoinder: "The bar has been raised. Get over it." [Does this guy have kids?]
Ideally, this would be done with a rigorous curriculum that just happened to have a test associated with it. The most important part of education reform, according to boosters, is not the WASL but new academic standards that lay out for teachers the skills their students should be learning. "It's the skills, not the scores," says Kim Schmanke, a spokesperson for state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson. She says Bergeson has challenged herself lately to not even say "WASL." Says O'Connor of the Partnership for Learning: "If you're using the standards and using them creatively, there shouldn't be any cram sessions for the WASL."