THE WASL: A CRITICAL REPORT TO INTERESTED CITIZENS OF THE

STATE OF WASHINGTON

Dr. Donald C. Orlich

March 15, 2005

Executive Summary

Conclusions. This report is an analysis of the 2004 Grade 5 Science WASL and the Grade 7 Mathematics WASL using criteria from developmental psychology and the scales of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Inferences from this study may be applicable to the entire battery of WASL assessments.

1. The Grade 5 Science WASL exceeds the intellectual level of the vast majority of grade 5 children and appears to be an 8^th grade examination.

2. While not specifically examined, English language learners will find this assessment to be virtually impossible to pass due to needed vocabulary skills.

3. The Grade Level Expectations (GLE’s) for Grade 5 science are developmentally

inappropriate. The GLE’s drive the WASL; thus the test is developmentally inappropriate.

4. The 7^th Grade Math WASL is in all reality a 9^th grade test.

5. Test items do not progress from relatively easy to more difficult. They simply appear with no logical sequence. Standardized tests begin with easy items and move to more difficult ones.

6. A total of 9 math concepts are tested. Yet, 185 math General Level Expectations are listed for Grade 7.

7. Reading and writing are most critical for student success. One could hypothesize a very high correlation between these two skills and success in the Science and Mathematics WASL.

8. Reviewing the GLE’s for grade 7 and 10 reveals parallel entries. That is, the grade 7 GLEs are almost identical in many cases to those of grade 10.

Policy Implications. There are instructional and policy implications associated with the findings and conclusions of this analysis.

First, if the WASL tests are advanced beyond the mental cognition of grade 5 and 7 pupils, then for most children failure will be the ultimate end, regardless of instructional techniques used.

Second, what psychological impact will failing an inappropriate science and math WASL have on students and their ultimate attitudes towards science and math, and schooling in general?

Third, one may predict litigation by concerned parents and child advocacy groups against the State of Washington.

Fourth, scoring errors have been found nationally in virtually all mandatory high-stakes tests. These have led to class action law suits. For example, the state of Minnesota paid out approximately $12 million to students and/or their parents due to scoring errors.

Fifth, the legislature is approaching fiscal irresponsibility or is not practicing fiscal accountability by continuing to fund the exorbitant WASL. With the State of Washington viewing at least a $2.2 Billion budget short fall, the massive $200,000,000 OSPI budget for school reform must be challenged.

Sixth, the legislature should commission an outside research organization to verify or refute this study.

INTRODUCTION

Educational reform in Washington State has in reality been reduced to “Doing the WASL,” Washington Assessment of Student Learning. This high-stakes test in mathematics, reading and writing is administered each spring to 4^th, 7^th and 10^th graders. Science is mandatory in grades 5, 8 and 10. Reading and Math WASLs are being developed for grades 3, 5, 6 and 8 to fulfill federal requirements agreed to by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. School children and educators take the WASL very seriously. There is much propaganda that we need to push students to their limits by raising the bar. However, this assumption is based on a flawed premise, as will be demonstrated with empirical data.

While much has been publicized about the WASL no one has analyzed the actual tests using published and long-accepted criteria that have stood the test of time. The focus of this report is on the 2004 Grade 5 Science WASL (see Part I) and the Grade 7 Mathematics WASL (see Part II). Inferences from this study may be applicable to the entire battery of WASL assessments.

Establishing the Limits to Student Achievement

To initiate my premise that there is a limit to the quantity and quality of student achievement, albeit not fixed, the Developmental Perspective will be used. This approach is associated with Jean Piaget (1969). His model assumes that humans evolve intellectually in various overlapping stages. Piaget describes four stages or periods of development—the sensorimotor stage, from birth to two years; the preoperational stage, from two to eight years; the concrete operational stage, from eight to eleven years; and the formal stage, from eleven to fifteen years and up.

The last stage is what schools attempt to reach in what we generally call thinking and analyzing. However, the majority of students in middle and high school are still in the concrete developmental stages. The listing below summarizes the developmental stages and adds the behavioral model of cognitive development, known as “Bloom’s Taxonomy” (Bloom et al. 1956). The latter approximates the National Assessment of Progress Levels (NAEP).

Epstein/Piaget Developmental Levels

1. Entry concrete, e.g., orders a series but would not observe relationships.

2. Advanced concrete, e.g., identifies one variable that affects results.

3. Entry formal, e.g., seeks “why” some phenomenon takes place and identifies causes.

4. Middle formal, e.g., interprets higher order graphical relationships.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels

1. Knowledge, e.g., recalls or recognizes information.

2. Comprehension, e.g., states examples in own words.

3. Application, e.g., uses information to solve problems.

4. Analysis, e.g., identifies issues or implications, and isolates component parts.

5. Synthesis, e.g., creates new forms or identifies abstract relationships.

6. Evaluation, e.g., judges via criteria.

Table 1 provides the relative percentages of students at Piaget’s stages of development as synthesized by Herman T. Epstein (see 2002), a world authority on the subject.Table 2 illustrates what cognitive tasks children can do at various levels assembled by two international authorities, Michael Shayer and Philip Adey (1981).These data form the basis of my interpretation of Tables 3-6, which present published data from the NAEP ages 9, 13 and 17 in science, mathematics, reading; and for grades four, eight and eleven in writing.

TABLE 1. PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS AT PIAGET’S COGNITIVE LEVELS

Age	Grade	Intuition	Entry Concrete (a)	Advanced Concrete (b)	Entry Formal (a)	Middle Formal (b)	Ref.
5.5	P	78	22				J
6	K	68	27	5			A
7	1	35	55	10			A,W
8	2	25	55	20			A
9	3	15	55	30			A
10	4	12	52	35	1		S
11	5	6	49	40	5		S
12	6-7	5	32	51	12		S
13	7-8	2	34	44	14	6	S
14	8-9	1	32	43	15	9	S
15	9-10	1	15	53	18	13	S
16	10-11	1	13	50	17	19	S
16-17	11-12	3	19	47	19	12	R
17-18	12	1	15	50	15	19	R
Adult	---	20	22	26	17	15	R

Table 1. Notes and References

1. Level (a) in each category is composed of children who have just begun to manifest one or two of that level’s reasoning schemes, while level (b) refers to children manifesting a half dozen or more reasoning schemes.

2. Table derived by Herman T. Epstein, personal communication, June 8, 1999. See also: Herman T. Epstein, “Biopsychological Aspects of Memory and Education.” In S. P. Shohov, Editor, Advances in Psychology Research, Volume 11. New York: Nova Science Publisher, Inc. , 2002, pp. 181-186

J Smedslund, J. (1964). Concrete Reasoning: A Study of Intellectual Development. Lafayette, IN: Child Development Publications of the Society for Research in Child Development.

A Arlin, P. Personal Communication with H. T. Epstein.

W Wei, T. D., et al. (1971). “Piaget’s Concept of Classification: A Comparative Study of Socially Disadvantaged and Middle-Class Young Children.” Child Development (42): 919-927.

R Renner, J. W., Stafford, D. G., Lawson, A. E., McKinnon, J. W., Friot, F. E. and Kellogg, D. H. (1976). Research, Teaching and Learning With the Piaget Model. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

S Shayer, M. and Adey, P. (1981). Towards a Science of Science Teaching. London: Heinemann.

TABLE 2. SELECTED CONCEPTS WITH PIAGETIAN DESCRIPTORS ILLUSTRATING CONCRETE TO FORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF A CHILD'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD

Topic	Early Concrete	Late Concrete	Early Formal	Late Formal
Investigative Style	Unaided style does not produce models	Can serially order and classify objects	Is confused, needs an interpretive model	Generates and checks possible explanations
Relationships	Can order a series but cannot make summarization	Readily uses the notion of reversibility	Can begin to use two independent variables	Reflects on reciprocal relationship between variables
Use of Models	Simple comparisons--one to one correspondence	Simple models, e.g., gear-box, skeleton	Deductive comparisons and models are taken as being true	Searches for explanatory model, uses proportional thinking
Categorizations	Objects are classified by one criterion-color, size	Partially orders and classifies hierarchically