School chief candidates divided on how to test

BLAINE, Wash. – The race for the state’s top schools job boils down to a single deeply disputed issue: how to measure the work of students and teachers.

The current Superintendent of Public Instruction, Terry Bergeson, told a business-backed political conference Thursday that Washington cannot back down on its decade-long push for measurable results in education.

“We cannot underestimate our kids. Our schools can be joyful, vibrant places, but built around rigorous standards,” Bergeson said. She asked for the Association of Washington Business’ support.

“I’m going to need it,” she told the group, “because the war is on. It’s going to be a very difficult election.”

Bergeson faces her predecessor: two-term Superintendent of Public Instruction Judith Billings.

Billings stepped down in January 1997, after announcing that she had contracted the HIV virus through artificial insemination. She entered the race late this year, saying that school funding has deteriorated on Bergeson’s watch and the push for accountability has become overly simplistic.

Both women say the state must put more money into its public schools system. Both support I-884, a ballot measure this November that would boost the state sales tax by a penny on the dollar, with the resulting $1 billion a year going to early childhood education, schools and colleges.

Billings wants the state to plug an extra $1.5 billion to $2 billion into the schools each year. Bergeson supports additional pay for teachers who get additional training, or who get certified to mentor new teachers.

The two differ sharply over the state’s new high-stakes student test, the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. It stems from 1993’s School Improvement Act, which spawned reforms aimed at holding schools accountable for how well they’re teaching. By 2008, high schoolers must pass the WASL in order to graduate.

Billings blasted the test on Thursday, saying it’s unfair to both students and teachers.

“We have an assembly-line education, with everything depending on one test score, and saying whether schools are a success or a failure based on that one test score,” she said.

Billings said she supports accountability, but would rather see a system that factors in things like attendance, grades, leadership, extracurricular activities and scores on college entry tests.

Bergeson, whose office helped build the WASL, defended it. She said it provides a badly needed set of statewide standards in subjects like math and reading. Graduation rates rise in states with such tests, she said, because teachers are held accountable for how the students do.

Those sorts of arguments are not popular with the Washington Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union. The union snubbed Bergeson – a former president of the union – when making endorsements earlier this year.

The state must stay the course and insist on accountability, Bergeson told the business group Thursday.

“I think it’s absolutely doable, but we’ve got to have the guts to do it,” Bergeson said. “We can’t blink now.”