Someone on the editorial staff of the Seattle Times is aggravated with a state senator's proposals for the Washington exit exam:
State Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Kent, should stop messing around with a well-crafted House bill that clarifies state high-school-graduation requirements, and work instead to pass it without major changes.
There's no time to waste. Next year's freshman class will be the first required to pass the 10th-grade state assessment test in order to earn a diploma. Students and teachers deserve straightforward, reasonable expectations.
House Bill 2195 codifies implementation of the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) test and allows students who fail it to retake it — several times if necessary. The bill passed the House with broad, bipartisan support and endorsement from the education and business communities.
It should be sailing through the Senate on its way to becoming law. Instead, Johnson, who chairs the Education Committee, has proposed changes to key parts of the bill that threaten to derail the effort.
Johnson would limit students to two retakes of the WASL. Those who fail both times could take what's known as a norm-referenced standardized achievement test. Both changes would undermine the intent of the state's ongoing standards-based education reform.
I see no point in switching to an alternate assessment after two retakes, most especially not to a norm-referenced assessment. Not only does that, as the author points out, defeat the purpose of setting objective standards, but if only those who fail the WASL twice take the alternate test, how are the norms going to be set? If the norms are set by the general population, kids who fail the WASL will fail the alternate test, because they've already been defined as being below all the other students. If norms are set by the population who takes only the alternate test, then the message being sent to students is, if you can prove you're the smartest of all the dodos who failed the WASL twice, you get a diploma. Ridiculous.
As for how many retakes, yes, one could argue that more than two retakes should be allowed. But schools should also be prepared to set a limit on retakes, or give unlimited retakes but insist that a student doesn't graduate until they pass the test, whether it takes one administration or ten.
Slightly more than one-third of the state's 10th-graders passed the reading, writing and math portions of the WASL last year...
Johnson questions the reliability and validity of the WASL.
I have a feeling these two sentences are not unrelated. The assumption that a test that gives politically-incorrect results must be unreliable or invalid is often made by those who fear (or are ignorant of) tests. This doesn't mean the WASL is reliable or valid, of course, but a third of the 10th-graders flunking doesn't mean it isn't, either.
I also think Johnson's comments are not independent of what was said in this meeting:
Superintendent Dolores Gibbons, Marcie Maxwell, Board Member and Legislative Representative and Dimmitt Middle School principal Kathleen Heaton-Bailey hosted a meeting today with state legislators to discuss the state and federal government’s reform efforts including the WASL...
The legislators were clearly moved by the passionate, knowledgeable commentaries from teachers and counselors at the meeting, which included Gordon Hedeen and Jason Kowalis from Lindbergh High School and John Schmitz and Gene Smith from Dimmitt.
Kowalis explained that although the goal to fully educate every student is laudable, the reality is children are individuals with very individual needs and cannot all be expected to perform at the same level.
Fine. But if you admit that some 17-year-olds cannot be expected, ever, to perform on the same level as most others, you also have to be prepared to deny diplomas to those students. There's a difference between saying, "Kids may perform at different levels," which is absolutely true, and "No matter what level a kid is at at age 17, they should get a diploma if they stayed in school," which is highly debatable.
“We’ve built an entire education system on a ‘no cookie cutter’ model,” Kowalis said. “Now we present this one test [WASL] as a way to measure their competence.”
Hedeen asked if an alternative test or other form of assessment could be considered for students who could not pass the WASL. In 2008 high school students will be required to pass the WASL before graduating. Hedeen noted that, for students who do not pass the test in the 10th grade, teachers in 11th- and 12th-grade classrooms would have to spend all their time helping them meet that goal. That, said Hedeen, could cause districts to restructure curriculum and possibly exclude subjects important to those students who did pass the test.
All their time? Really? Wouldn't ability tracking negate a lot of this? This wouldn't affect those kids in AP classes, I'm sure. And can anyone explain to me why the material normally be taught in an 11th- or 12th-grade classroom would not help a kid on a 10th-grade exam? The implication here is that teachers will have to "dumb down" 11th- and 12th grade material for everyone, but if that's the case, why are these 10th-graders being promoted to the higher grades? If they're so clueless that teachers will have to spend all their time helping them, why promote them?
These teachers and administrators want it both ways. They want agreement with their declaration that all kids are different, but they want diplomas to be "one-size-fits-all" - awarded to kids regardless of their achievements. They want to focus on those 11th- and 12th-graders that pass the WASL by not dumbing down the material, but they want to promote into those grades kids who can't pass a 10th-grade test. No wonder the idea of an exit exam aggravates them.
Posted by kswygert at February 26, 2004 11:33 AM