CE Week #2: “Eliminating WASL first step to equality”
By Donald C. Orlich Special to The Spokesman-Review
January 31, 2008
On Jan. 21, as our nation observed Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, many statements focused on his famous “I have a dream” speech. Unfortunately, a dream is all that the majority of minority children have in Washington state. Why? Because of the devastation that the Washington Assessment of Student Learning is having on children of color, standards notwithstanding. The WASL is administered in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10. The total direct and indirect costs associated with the WASL are over $1 billion. For that tidy sum, let us review the results for only grade 10, a very critical point in high school where students often decide to stay on or drop out. Data for all 10th-graders – approximately 75,000 – who took the WASL in 2006-07 show the following: The percentages meeting standard — that is, passing an arbitrary score — were 80.8 on reading, 83.9 on writing, 50.4 on math and 36.4 on science. White and Asian students exceeded those performances in all categories. But the percentages for black students were 37 for reading, 39.3 for writing, 14.2 for math and 9.2 for science. Among students with limited English, the percentages passing were 38.3 in reading, 37.7 in writing, 10.7 in math and 2.9 in science. For American Indians, the corresponding figures were 68.4 in reading, 72.4 in writing, 31.3 in math and 19.3 in science. For Hispanic students the percentages were 66.1 in reading, 68.6 in writing, 25.6 in math and 15.5 in science. Low-income 10th-graders receiving free and reduced-price lunches recorded passing percentages of 68.2 in reading, 72.3 in writing, 30.5 in math and 18.7 in science. A detailed analysis for all grades in which the WASL is administered would show a similar (and most depressing) pattern, although there has been some improvement since 2000. The WASL and the costly nonsense of school reform, including the No Child Left Behind Act, flat out discriminate against poor and minority children and carry more than a hint of institutional racism. Yes, there are isolated instances where schools with large populations of minority or poor children have substantially higher passing rates on the WASL. But those schools are anomalies. Those increased scores cost students their chance for a well-rounded education – dropping art, music and vocational education. The percentages of 10th-graders meeting the WASL science standard range from 2.9 to 41.4. Is this an indication of poor science instruction? No. It is a dramatic illustration of a terribly constructed science test. Science is an important subject for our state. Science teachers have been subtly informed to shut up and do the WASL. School board members have been far too silent on the negative impact that the WASL is having on a balanced curriculum. A small number of brave superintendents are now fighting for changes in the graduation requirement, as are the state Parent Teacher Association and the Washington Education Association. Others have protested the adverse effect that the WASL has on all children, regardless of race, color or creed. Spokane and several other school districts face severe budget cuts for instruction and elimination of library services. This is in the face of the governor now wanting to waste more than $38 million on a new form of WASL. Take time to stand up and be angry. Dump the WASL and all its trappings. It is time to end this miscarriage of justice and end the WASL now. Only by eliminating this costly moral and educational blunder will that dream of Martin Luther King Jr. have a chance of becoming a reality. Contact your state senator and representatives to de-link the WASL from high school graduation. Better yet, suggest that the entire WASL reform package be thrown out.
This article jumped all over the place. One minute it was discussing the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., the next minute it was talking about how the WASL is racist, and then it was talking about the WASL science test. That was very frustrating. Can’t the guy just stick with ONE topic without going on a rabbit trail to another one?
Not only that, but I’m still not totally sure how the WASL is racist. Yes, I can see the differences in passing score percentages among white, black, Asian and Hispanic students. Yes, I can see that the African-American students scored lowest on the WASL while the white students scored highest. But I honestly don’t see how that proves the WASL is a racist test.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a supporter of the WASL. I think it should be completely scrapped and we should come up with a different, more fair way to test how far our students have come. But I don’t see how it’s racist. The only section of the WASL that could possibly be considered racist is the survey in the middle of the booklet, and that was banned from being made mandatory because parents didn’t want theirs and their kids’ privacy invaded by a perfect stranger.
Is it racist because students say what ethnicity they are on the back of the booklet? That section is optional, last I heard, and it’s against the law for a test grader to discriminate on the basis of race, isn’t it? And if that’s the case–if test graders are failing students because they’re black–well, first we need to prove it, and then we need to solve THAT problem.
I hate the WASL. I want it gone. But I don’t think the best way to get rid of the test is to say it’s racist.
FINALLY!! I personally have always been against the WASL. Yes, that is mainly because I am a student, and I didn’t want to take the WASL in 4th, 8th, or 10th grade. But now, as I have grown accustomed to taking ridiculous placement tests, I understand the need of a standardized test: we need to make sure that each high school diploma that is issued is equal to all the other high school diplomas in the state.
From reading this article, (and talking to my mother) I have learned that the WASL is not the best way to issue a standardized test. One reason is that it costs WAY too much money. I understand that it will cost some, but $1 billion a year is a little pricey. My mother says the reason is that the WASL has just gotten too big. She said, “It’s become a monster!” Evidence of this standardized anomaly is thus listed: The size of the booklet is enormous. The time to take the test is too long because the booklet is so huge. The time to grade the test is too long because the booklet is so huge. Printing costs money, shipping costs money, administering costs money, shipping again, grading costs money, and finally sending results costs money. Each cost money, which is why the cost is so huge. Not only that, but because some students aren’t up to par, there are multiple times you may take the test (more money) and there are even alternative procedures if you fail that are even more expensive. The test needs to be downsized.
Another reason I am against the WASL is how the material is presented. Many of the questions are repeated concepts in the test. Instead of having about 5 questions per topic, they have 10. Each of these 10 questions is complex, involving multiple content areas and processes. There is no need to have so many repetitions. Speaking from experience, after you answer the same question—with only slight variations of scenarios—3 times, you don’t want or need to answer 7 more. “The percentages of 10th-graders meeting the WASL science standard range from 2.9 to 41.4. Is this an indication of poor science instruction? No. It is a dramatic illustration of a terribly constructed science test.” It is the construction and presentation of the material that needs to be fixed.
Obviously, from this article, many students are not meeting this standard. It is sad that the education we have is not apparently to the standards of the WASL. I say that if so many are not passing, the standards need to be reviewed and reconstructed. This is happening, well, it did happen. They haven’t straightened all the kinks in these new standards, but they are working on it. This is a positive step in correcting the need and dream concerned in this article.
How the WASL connects to AP Gov. and Pol. is through the No Child Left Behind Act: Bush Sr.’s legislation to ensure that poor and disadvantaged children obtained an education. The WASL is a response to this legislation. States all across America created exit exams to hold teachers and schools accountable for every student’s success. The problem was that it wasn’t properly funded. It is similar to a judiciary unfounded mandate, where a court will force a state to comply with its rulings without paying the state to do the court’s desire. I would say that this act was a mandate—requirement that directs state/local governments to comply with federal rules under threat or penalties or as a condition of receipt of a federal grant—but I do not know if there were strings attached. I also do not know if states had categorical grants (specified grants to state and local governments to spend money with strings attached) nor if it was Bush Sr.’s response to some states having standardized testing and wanting all states to improve their education. All I know is that not enough of America’s budget was given to this act, but that’s said and done. Now, the individual states are exceeding plausible budgets with testing students too long and ineffectively, wasting money and time.
Corporate America is downsizing, government spending needs to downsize, Terry Bergeson, get the hint, DOWNSIZE!
Standardized tests are supposed to catch the kids who might typically slide through without a proper education. I would not say that they are racist seeing that they just say the results of the tests. The results prove that there is a great divide between the test scores of white and Asian students with black and Hispanic students- no more, no less. I understand why the government implemented the WASL and the No Child Left Behind programs and assessments, but it does not seem that after these tests anything is being done to help anyone along. Instead, the state just tells students that they cannot graduate until they have passed. Students just retake the test over and over with absolutely no more direction than they had the first time. States comply with the government because, as we learned, if a state disobeys they get funds taken away. The government pretty much gives states an ultimatum of either going along with the WASL (or whatever their assessment is) or No Child Left Behind or they will not have money to repair roads. It seems that these programs have back-fired a ton because there are going to be budget cuts on libraries in Washington. Libraries might actually help kids learn- they are much more valuable than the WASL. Also, the governor wants to revamp the WASL by spending $38 million to finally “get it right.” Standardized tests do not do a thing for students. They are poorly constructed and it would be horrible for teachers to teach to the WASL instead of teaching students information worth learning. The WASL needs to be dumped because it is ineffective, not racist.
I agree with this article that the test either needs to be fixed quite a bit or just scrapped. I mean it looks like this test is perfect for the rich white kids. But everyone else is struggling and this just shows something is wrong with our public school system. How in the world do we expect people struggling with English to pass the science portion of the WASL? Great so when the 97.1 percent of these kids have to retake this test over and over again to satisfy some national requirement is stupid. They will be trying to get through all 6 of their classes but have to stay with a lower grade science because some test requires it. Or what about the 90.8 percent of Black kids who have to do the same. This system is going to screw up every one of these kids who just want to make it through school. The statistics of failures are staggering and are causing every one of our schools to have to back track and fix this problem. The no child left behind act has hosed children across the country and needs to be destroyed. Bush gave it, we tried it, and we hate it.
First of all, I agree with the author on most parts, except that the WASL is racist. If you used those same statistics in schools and percentages of minorities they have you will find similar results, for example schools with a higher percentages of African American students have higher drop out rates, is that because the schools are racist? No, it is because the less advantaged, or the lower the economic status of a neighborhood the higher the dropout rates, and African Americans numbers seem to be higher in places of poverty. Also the African American youth culture of the United States has led many students to a path away from school and school related things, especially the WASL test.
The WASL test does have a vast devastating effect on some students. For those students, who are average, or maybe a little below, have a hard enough time to just pass all there classes to graduate let alone worry about passing the WASL or the WASL retakes before graduation. What about the students with learning disabilities in any of the WASL subject areas, they are still required to take and pass the WASL. If these students do not pass the WASL the first time and have to retake it the next school year. That means up to two and a half weeks of being pulled out of their regular classes to take the test. This can cause them not to graduate because they missed too much class time trying to pass the WASL. The WASL is a costly hurdle cause a mass drop out of students who other wise would have scraped by. Forcing this upon schools, the curriculum and the students suffer. It is so obvious that the negatives have having the WASL required to graduate outweigh the positives. The Child Left Behind Act is a joke, a feeble attempt at George W. Bush to please the education focused Democrats. The Democrats started to put spin on the presidents’ lack of policy agenda for education, or they started to portray him in a negative light.
This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. The fact that the author has the nerve to compare an era of brutal and savage racism consisting of lynchings, beatings, complete segregation and inexcusably inhumane treatment of African Americans to a state mandated test is asinine, ignorant and holds absolutely no merit. The No Child Left Behind Act sets minimum standards on what a child should know before graduating and has been instated with very honorable intentions. Now don’t get me wrong, I hate advisory as much as the next person but I can respect what the government is trying to do with it. I can’t explain the test scores and I think that the fact that they seem to reflect a trend that punishes the minorities and those lower on the economic spectrum is very saddening. I can see how the WASL is frustrating and can skew teacher’s curriculum from what they intended on teaching but the WASL is not some completely farfetched, abstract complete waste of time. There needs to be standards. Kids need to be held accountable. If a student has difficulty learning or has a neurological problem that they should be held to the same standards, but I believe that there needs to be some threshold crossed by students. I know it’s far from enjoyable and is flat out obnoxious and some people might even say that it “sucks” and honestly I would be one of those people, but it’s a hoop to jump through and its really not that big of an obstacle. Honestly, Martin Luther King correlation, I think he’s being a little dramatic!!!!
I do not believe the WASL is intentionally racist, nor do I believe Dr. Orlich thinks so. I read this article in the paper, and what Kautzman left out is a noteworthy fact. Dr. Donald C. Orlich is Professor Emeritus in the Science Mathematics Engineering Education Center at Washington State University. He is a distinguished member of the education community in Washington, author of two books and recipient of several awards. My point is that Orlich knows this stuff. Reviewing curriculum and standardized tests is part of his profession. Knowing this, I feel secure trusting his expertise. Moving on now. The WASL is not intentionally racist; it demonstrates institutional racism. Institutional racism is that engrained, traditional brand of prejudice evident in suburbs (there’s a reason most residents of Planned Unit Developments, like Summerwood and Pinewood Hills, are white) and standardized tests as well. Vanessa pointed out that ethnic minorities tend to have lower socioeconomic status than their white counterparts, and that persons of low SE status usually live in the same neighborhoods. This creates a correlation between ethnic minorities and disadvantaged schools, engendering a culture of low achievement, which could account for some of the disparities in WASL performance between races. But I also know that standardized tests tend to be written by white males, thus giving some intrinsic advantage to white male test-takers. My knowledge on this subject is very limited, but, for instance, males and females show advantages on tests framed in different contexts. Scientific American Mind had a fascinating article on gender differences in math with a great study outlining that very point, but alas, I can’t find that part of the article just now. But the point stands that the way a test is written or officiated can substantially influence the results. This means the striking differences between races could indicate a flaw in the test, not just an injustice of society.
By the way, this connects to…well, trying to solve our world’s problems. Each party has their own legislative plan for making systems better, and No Child Left Behind, a partially funded federal mandate requiring standardized tests in public schools, is the Bush Administration’s approach.
I will be the first person to tell you that I think the WASL is trassssshhhh. Obviously this article is completely one sided to the disadvantages of implementing such a system on students but it brings up some good points. The statistics stand on their own that minorities don’t pass the WASL at as high a rate as white and Asian students. Although the article only covered the 10th grade WASL it’s clear that something needs to be done about the race issue around this test. When someone fails the WASL they have to take a WASL supplemental class for whatever subject they failed so that they can re-take it, pass it, and go on to graduate. This is all fine and dandy except that instead of taking a class like art or music the student has to spend time in these WASL classes. My uncle (as well as two aunts), lives in rural Washington in a small farming community. He teaches among other things: Current World Problems, U.S. History, World History, 10th grade English, 11th grade English and a supplemental WASL reading/English class. Since the school is so small (senior classes are often about 15 – 20 kids) there are only two students in this WASL class and they spend their time working on their writing skills in hopes that they can pass the WASL this go-around and don’t have to drop out. While I think it’s nice that such a small school can afford to pay someone to teach two students for an hour about how to read and write I have to wonder if it’s really worth it. What does the WASL really do for anyone besides cause headaches for teachers and students alike. Obviously with the No Child Left Behind Act the government forces states to follow legislation to get students up to par by the time they graduate or the government will withdraw funding for other programs (like we learned about when dealing with legislation) and for education. It’s a double-edged sword and while the state officials pretty much have their hands tied in regards to following the WASL and No Child Left Behind, I think someone needs to bring up that it’s not only a ridiculous program to try and follow but it’s hurting minorities.
I’m going to have to agree with Stephanie. I understand the reason for standardized tests, but what good do they really do? All they tell us is how well we can take a test that, more likely than not, is not even close to our ability level. For some, the test may be too easy, for some, too hard. But rarely do you have kids where the test fits them just right. Not everyone is at the same ability for them to take a standardized test. My mom has to have her kids (first graders, might I add) take some form of the WASL or WASL practice. ‘If Jan had 2 cookies and Nick had 3, how many cookies are there total?’ Kids have to, first of all, know how to read. There are so many levels of readers at that age. Second of all, they need to know how to decipher what a word like ‘total’ means. Granted, the first grade WASL is much different from the tenth grade, but the range of ability levels is moderately the same no matter what the grade. But what makes the WASL such a hard test is not always the content, but the time. I can hardly sit through a block period of English, let alone a multiple hour test. Staying focused and functional for that long is often hard for most. So what are we doing? We are making it so no student can graduate if they have not sat still for hours on end to take a test that is often beyond or below their ability. It’s it just doesn’t sound right.
Wow, Stephanie sure had a lot to say about the WASL! And I agree with her. I don’t like the stupid test, and it’s outrageous the amount of money it takes to administer it. Now, aren’t we supposed to be trying to get our nation out of debt? Isn’t spending millions of dollars on a standardized test that everyone hates kind of going in the opposite direction??? As far as the test being racist, I share Danielle’s confusion about how the WASL is discriminating. I wish the author had given some examples of why he thinks the WASL is racist. Other than the statistics of what percentage of minority groups passed the test, there wasn’t much more information to back his theory up. And it really wasn’t convincing enough. So I guess I’m in agreement with basically everyone when I say that I don’t think that the WASL is intentionally racist. There is another thing about the author’s information that I would like to point out. When the author talked about the percentage of people passing the science part of the WASL being so low, I thought well of course it is! Everyone who took it knew that they weren’t required to pass it in order to graduate, and they wouldn’t have to retake that part if they didn’t pass. So most of them probably left it blank, or didn’t even try. I know several people who go to Mt. Spokane who have told me that they just totally blew it off. I agree with Brittany when she says that the WASL is ineffective. So there you have it.
All though this debate is long gone, just going to throw two cents in here. The SAT was designed to prove that whites were smarter then blacks. Standardized tests always benefit the most privileged members of a society. Due to discrimination currently existing be it subtle, or the very institutionalized racism that existed as early as 30 years ago, (think about it, thats when our parents were kids meaning that black parents were denied jobs they should have had the right to, meaning there kids grew up less well off then their white counter parts.) The point is this, standardized tests are great to access how proficient a student is but, when demanding that the student be able to pass a test it to graduate it not only discriminates against the weakest or poorest, which like grace said is minorities, but it can keep them in that position.