OUR VIEW: WASL survey must
be scrapped
Steve McClure, for the
edit board
Quick, call the Department of Ecology.
Someone send a cleanup crew over to the Office of Superintendent of Public
Instruction in
That's the only possible explanation for the state's decision to tack on a
bunch of survey questions to the Washington Assessment of Student Learning that
go way beyond what the state school's chief needs to know.
The test has been buried under controversy for several years now, and that's
likely to increase this spring when 10th graders have to pass the test in order
to stay on track toward graduation. Apparently it wasn't controversial enough,
though, so the "educrats" in
The state says it's just responding to requests from school districts.
But local school officials say that's not the case,
and many are scratching their heads wondering who decided this information was
necessary.
Parents, meanwhile, are rightly upset the state is asking questions that do not
measure academic performance and, frankly, are none of the state's business.
The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, with its inability to cope
with legitimate criticisms of its vaunted test, has taken the admirable goal of
raising academic standards and turned it into a frightening example of state
government run amok.
Since school officials don't seem to understand why the survey questions are
included, there really are only a couple possible explanations for
The bureaucrats
in Olympia are either devising a series of excuses to toss about when a good
chunk of the state's children don't pass the test, or the people running the
state superintendent's office believe they have ultimate parental authority
over Washington's school children and need to know what those pesky surrogates
that provide room and board are doing.