Now that its math section has been suspended as a graduation requirement, it’s hard to understand what the continuing fuss over the Washington Assessment of Student Learning is all about.
On Friday, the state Superintendent of Public Instruction’s office released statewide res ults from this spring’s round of high school WASL tests. With the flawed math assessment facing an overhaul, students need pass only the reading and writing sections to clear the hurdle.
The class of 2008 – the first cohort for which the WASL is serious business – has done very well indeed. More than 86 percent of the class has passed both sections; since last spring, retakes have put 5,197 additional students over the top in reading and another 6,146 over the top in writing. But not all students have taken the test; of those who did, 95 percent passed, according to the SPI.
That leaves 14 percent who haven’t cleared the hurdle. But wait – those students have been given a way around the hurdle.
Originally, the WASL was intended to be a “high stakes” test: You don’t pass it, you don’t graduate. But in recent years, the Legislature has been busy mass-producing alternative routes to a high school diploma.
Students who can’t pass the WASL can, for example, can put together portfolios of schoolwork that are supposed to demonstrate academic competence. Or score well on the SAT or ACT. Or score 3 or better on selected Advanced Placement exams.
Or demonstrate that they earned grades as good as classmates who did pass the test. Or earn a vocational-technical certificate in industrial arts.
At last count, there were no fewer than 20 different ways around the WASL graduation requirement.
So this is anything but a high stakes test. And the fact that nearly 87 percent of next year’s seniors have passed its reading and writing sections shows that the bar is not set too high. Any test that every last student could pass would not be a test at all.
The basic idea behind the WASL was that students should have to demonstrate they’ve acquired a meaningful body of knowledge before they graduate – that they’ve done something more than occupy seats in classrooms for 12 years.
The WASL and its many alternatives help ensure that a diploma from a Washington high school is a serious credential. If it’s hard to get, it should be hard to get.
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