August 26, 2009 in City

State: WASL scores will not be tossed

Office was investigating tampering allegations at Balboa

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State experts who investigated WASL tests from Balboa Elementary School for alleged tampering have determined there are no irregularities, school officials said Tuesday.

No scores will be invalidated

The state said no test scores will be invalidated.

Washington’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction inspected a sixth-grade classroom’s tests after allegations arose in mid-May that Principal Pat Lynass tampered with completed tests, officials said.

An Aug. 20 letter from the state office states: “Our review of the reported testing/proctoring irregularities concluded that those irregularities did not lower students test scores.”

In early May, Lynass was in teacher Jim Harrison’s classroom during testing because staff raised concerns about how serious his students were taking the WASL. After confronting a student about doodling on the test, Lynass looked through the class’ tests – a violation of WASL protocol – for other drawings or doodles.

Lynass was reminded of the appropriate guidelines for the state’s assessment.

Harrison has taken a medical leave of absence for the school year, the district said.

One comment on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  maderb on August 26 at 8:48 p.m.

  Hmmmm. There’s more to this story than meets the eye. Mr Harrison is an outstanding teacher who cares deeply about his students and their education. When my son struggled with the fuzzy math being taught in the state, Jim was not afraid to take a different approach (some would say an old school approach) and caught him up by 2 grades in just a matter of months. The principal had to look the other way while Jim worked with kids before school to tutor them because he was not following district/state curricula guidelines. But without his willingness to put his neck out there, my son would have struggled in all his classes. His math shortfalls affected his confidence in all areas.

  Mr Harrison is not a follower by any means- he is a leader and is willing to tell it like it is. It is not surprising that other staff did not like his style- he made “teaching the WASL” a substandard way of educating our children.

  We were looking forward to having Mr H around to prepare our sons for Middle School. I guess district policy trumps good teaching. Too bad the one who reported the incident is the one taking the fall. Jim would have loved to be there for his last year of teaching, but being labeled a “problem” because he wasn’t afraid to call bad curriculum what it is-BAD CURRICULUM, was too much heat to take. Good Luck to you Jim, and thanks for your many years of putting the betterment of our children’s education ahead of career goals and assurance of a paycheck.

  To those teachers out there that are teaching the WASL and passing kids on to the next level to keep yourself looking good and preserving your career path- maybe you should consider a different line of work. You are doing the public an outrageous disservice by not really educating our kids. Unfortunately many of you are products of a broken system yourselves and don’t know the difference.

  If you want to see more truth about what is really going on in our district and our state, try sitting down with your kids and really looking at the work they are doing and how they are being taught to do it. And go to http://www.wheresthemath.com/blog2/ if you want to see where our math curriculum is at. Did you know that for years the state has had an elementary math curriculum that no textbook could support? That is why your kids don’t have a textbook to reference when trying to learn new concepts. It is all up to the teacher- and many of them have less than adequate math skills to begin with.