Waiting to exhale: Countdown to WASL

The Seattle Times announced in its Sunday edition that it is launching a yearlong series of stories following students from around the Puget Sound as they prepare for, take and receive scores for the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, the state's high-stakes test required for all students to graduate in 2008 and which will count for the first time when taken by this year's sophomores beginning in March.

The newspaper has one of the strongest education reportersw around in Linda Shaw, and she probably knows more about the WASL than most educators. Shaw wrote an introduction for the piece:

This spring, when high-school sophomores take the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, the stakes will be very high. So will the stress.

The Class of 2008 is the first group of students required to pass the WASL in order to graduate. For educators, parents and students, that's a sobering prospect: So far, more than half of the state's 10th-graders each year fail to pass at least one part of the test.

Today, The Seattle Times begins a series of stories examining the use of the WASL as a graduation requirement. Over the next several months, we'll explore a number of key questions about the exam.

How are schools preparing students? How is the test affecting low-income and minority students, groups that have struggled with it the most? What has happened in states that already have graduation tests in place? Did Olympia, in demanding the state's students meet tougher standards, give schools the money and materials needed to succeed?

And we'll track the debate in the Legislature, where lawmakers are reconsidering whether so much of a student's future should ride on the outcome of one test.

We'll also view the WASL through the eyes of a handful of Puget Sound sophomores — all of whom failed at least part of the test in seventh grade — as they gear up to take it this time around.

Today, we introduce you to three students who have agreed to share their experiences, pass or fail.

The Times' Executive Editor, Mike Fancher, wrote about the endeavor in his Sunday column about the paper:

"I was surprised at how scared they are."

— Ben Graeber, teacher at Hazen High in Renton

"They" are members of the Class of 2008, the first students who must pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning to graduate from high school. They obviously have a huge stake in the WASL test, but so do the rest of us. That is why The Seattle Times today launches an extended project we call "The Class of 2008: Facing the Test." Throughout the year we will look anew at important questions:

How good is the test? What does it expect of students? How has the education system and the state helped them to do what is being asked of them?

We begin today with Linda Shaw's overview of the WASL and some arresting statistics about the students whose futures are on the line. The number of students thought to be at risk to fail some portion of the test this year is alarming. And for the Class of 2008, the test is a hurdle they must get over to graduate.

Small wonder Ben Graeber's language-arts students are scared, as many sophomores throughout the state must be. And today we introduce readers to three sophomores who have agreed to let us follow them through the WASL experience.

Everyone is holding his or her breath this spring to see if all the questions we've had for a decade will be answered when the scores come back -- and they'll be back earlier than ever, by June 6 so students can take summer remediation courses. Some of my questions:

• Will we really see scores increase dramatically as so many leaders have predicted? The thinking goes that because this year it finally "counts," students will take the WASL more seriously and will perform better. In 2005, just 47 percent of students passed all three sections (mathematics, reading and writing -- science is not required until the Class of 2010). In Wenatchee, it's even tougher -- students in the Class of 2007 need to pass the WASL to graduate because of a local requirement.
  
• Will students of color, students living in poverty, students with English as a nonnative language and students with special needs perform as well as other students? These groups have a far lower pass rate than other students. Not surprisingly, affluent, suburban students who are Caucasian or Asian perform the best.
• What will the retakes and alternative assessments look like? If a student cannot demonstrate competency on the WASL, how will we allow him or her to demonstrate competency in a way that maintains the rigor of the WASL and does not duplicate the requirements of one of the other three graduation requirements (transcript, culminating project and fifth-year plan)?
  
• What will happen after another year or even two and the state's Class of 2008 is still far from 100 percent passing the WASL? That's the $64,000 question, and if I knew how to solve this and others, I would be shouting it from every mountaintop.

So, we countdown to WASL -- roughly 30 class days -- and we hope we can make a difference in the remaining time before thousands of sophomores across the state open their test booklets and with a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil begin to anser questions and solve problems. It's here to stay, and we're all waiting to exhale when we see students pass at rates we need them to.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.