WASL test is government attempt to shame our schools
JUANITA DOYON;
Every day, as I hear from
parents throughout the state asking for information about how to opt children
out of the WASL, asking for anti-WASL buttons and asking for help to deal with
difficult situations in school surrounding WASL tests and "higher
standards," I have to wonder just what the powers that be are thinking.
It's been three years since
I began fighting high-stakes testing in our state and nationally. Little has
changed for the better where the Washington Assessment of Student Learning is
concerned. What is worse, the high stakes are now being pounded with the
federal hammer known as the No Child Left Behind act.
As local teachers are being
forced to conform to state and federally mandated standards for teaching
methods and content, parents are rapidly losing any voice we once had in our
children's education. Federalized, state-enforced, standards-based education is
condescending at best, unconstitutional at worst.
Our own state school
superintendent, Terry Bergeson, is fond of saying that if parents understood
the current reform of education, we would agree and go along with it without
all this rebellion.
I have news for her. We
understand, and our rebellion is getting stronger and louder.
When federal Secretary of
Education Rod Paige claims that "shame" is his greatest
"weapon" for school improvement, it is clear that our neighborhood
schools are under attack.
In order to shame teachers, parents
and students, a case must be made that our schools, our families and our
children are failing. Our state testing system aids and abets Paige's goal of
shaming, by labeling more than 60 percent of the children who take it as
"substandard."
It is interesting that it
does this even while Washington's public school students are excelling on SATs
and other national tests, and our schools are far above national average
according to other indicators.
Do some of our schools,
families and children struggle? Of course they do, but high-stakes testing and
control from above aren't the remedy to these struggles. And WASL tests, with
all their expense and hype, are not telling us anything we didn't already know.
A government bent on
demoralizing our schools, a test designed to fail our children - it is time for
parents to ask ourselves: In whom do we trust?
Do we trust a state
superintendent who stands by a test that labels 95 percent of our schools
failing by federal law? Do we trust the Partnership for Learning - the
education arm of the business-dominated Washington Roundtable - which continues
to push for a Certificate of Mastery requirement based on WASL?
Do we trust a testing
company, Riverside Publishing, that has presented tests containing joke
questions about Mary Kay Letourneau and other less humorous mistakes each year?
Do we trust a scoring
company, NCS Pearson, which has misscored WASL tests in the past and has been
embroiled in a lawsuit in Minnesota for misgrading thousands of state tests?
(Some 8,000 seniors in
Minnesota had their tests misgraded, and many missed their graduation in 2000
because their tests were marked failing when they really passed. In all, 47,000
tests were misgraded.)
As a parent of four children
who have been taught by approximately 120 competent, caring teachers over the
past 18 years, I choose to trust the teachers in my local schools and myself to
know what my children need to be successful in school and in life.
Thank you anyway,
Partnership for Learning, Terry Bergeson, Riverside Publishing, NCS Pearson and
Rod Paige, but kindly get out of my child's class.
(Published 12:30AM, April 21st, 2003)