Plain Talk

about matters of interest in Washington State and, often, elsewhere

February 2007

Is the WASL an unreasonable obstacle? That depends: do you think, for example, that an eight-grader ought to be able to understand that question? Yet nearly a quarter of Washington eighth-grade pupils tested last year didn't know what an "obstacle" is. Are those pupils soundly on track to a high-school diploma and a prosperous life?

Since Sputnik rang the warning bell half a century ago, Americans have been deeply worried about their children's education, and, it seems, rightly so: it's been said that one-fifth of American high-school graduates cannot read their own diplomas, and the unending complaints from the business community demonstrate that many graduates lack even basic skills. But "if you don't like the message, shoot the messenger"--if the WASL shows that pupils aren't learning satisfactorily, it must be the WASL that is at fault. Teachers say so because they don't want to be thought inept; pupils say so because they don't want to be thought stupid or lazy; parents say so because _their_ children couldn't possibly be underperformers. This is, after all, the age of no-fault life.

It is blindingly obvious that we can only measure how well pupils are learning by testing them with a standard test; anything else is just hot air. Giving such tests--and making diplomas conditional on them--is neither new nor terribly difficult: New York State's "Regents Examinations" date back to 1878. No one has ever suggested that there is any particular difficulty in getting a high-school diploma in New York State, yet some sample Regents questions from a century back are more difficult than those in today's WASLs.

There is a tremendous amount of nonsense floating about concerning the WASL, a very great deal of which falls under the heading "urban mythology"; as someone once remarked, there are two kinds of facts, those you look up and those you make up, and most WASL "facts" are of the second kind.

When in doubt, look into the horse's mouth. There are large sections of recent WASLs on line, with numerous sample answers and explanations of how and why those answers were graded, and I looked them over, something I recommend everyone try. While I--and, I daresay anyone--could nit-pick at length, nits are just that: nits. _Overall_, it seems to me that both the questions and the grading methods are reasonable. (I wish I had the space to reproduce some examples.)

One repeatedly hears gripes about "teaching to the test", as if that were some sacrilege: but what do those words actually mean? If "the test" is a measure of both knowledge and skills, what else should schools be doing _but_ "teaching to the test"? Is that not what schools have been charged with doing since the dawn of civilization?

We have a choice: dumb down the test, or smarten up the test-takers. We can choose what we want our schools to give Washington's children: a demonstrably sound education, or a false sense of self-esteem and a diploma that they cannot read.

Plain Talk is a more or less monthly feature carried in the weekly Ritzville Adams County Journal.