Schools gearing up for WASL

Fifteen-year-old Bill Anderson wears a WASL pin with a red slash at Shadle Park High School daily – his statement against the Washington Assessment for Student Learning test.

Anderson and his mother have been longtime WASL opponents.

Anderson’s message is going national in April when he appears on “Nick News,” a program on the cable television channel Nickelodeon. Anderson was taped two weeks ago explaining his belief that the WASL is unfair and puts undue stress on students. By 2008, all students in Washington’s public high schools will need to pass the test to graduate. Schools and districts can face federal sanctions if too few students pass the test.

Every April, state schools gear up to give the WASL to fourth-, seventh- and 10th-grade students to measure how well they’re learning to think through math, reading and writing problems. Along with the test comes the anti-WASL crowd who criticize the test for a number of reasons, from being too hard and too expensive, to their contention that it’s an imperfect measuring system with too much influence.

Each year, as WASL testing nears, a group calling itself Mothers Against WASL becomes more active with protests against the state’s high-stakes test. Demonstration plans are posted on the Web at www.juanita2004spi.com/mothersagainstwasl.

WASL opponents say that when students start being denied diplomas in 2008 for not passing the test, the fur will really start to fly.

For now, the anti-WASL movement is dealing with some setbacks. In November, voters re-elected WASL supporter Terry Bergeson as state superintendent of public instruction. Her opponent campaigned against the WASL, which was first given to fourth-graders in 1997, to seventh-graders in 1998 and to 10th-graders in 1999.

This spring, the state is offering a pilot WASL expansion for three additional grades, adding $6 million in costs to the $12 million annual test, according to the state Office of Public Instruction. More than half the state’s 2,000 districts volunteered for the practice test – Spokane Public Schools, Mead and West Valley among them.

With a test expansion and the state highlighting some of the WASL progress made in last spring’s testing, could the WASL-resisters be losing momentum?

“We’ve been kind of quiet over the winter but we don’t plan on staying that way,” said Shelly Anderson, Bill Anderson’s mother and Eastern Washington representative for Mothers Against WASL.

The numbers paint a picture of the WASL gaining more acceptance from state schools.

Statewide, the number of fourth-, seventh- and 10th-grade students not tested has been dipping each year. In 2000, 7.2 percent of 10th-grade students were not tested in math, either because they refused, were ill or were given invalidated tests. In 2004, that number declined to 6.3 percent.

Only 1.2 percent of fourth-graders did not take the math test in 2004.

The number of students who refused to take the tests in Spokane Public Schools was relatively low last year, at 38 students, including 15 10th-graders.

Anyone who refuses to take the test gets a zero, which will prevent a student from graduating, starting with the class of 2008.

Bill Anderson, a member of the class of 2007, said that this spring, just like last year, he and a few friends will pass out test refusal forms during test time at Shadle Park.

The WASL protest “comes up around WASL time,” said Nancy Stowell, associate superintendent for teaching and learning services at Spokane Public Schools. “It’s never been on a very large scale.”

The anti-WASL movement isn’t very visible partly because people are working more behind the scenes, said LeeAnn Hancock, a wildlife biologist with three children in the Mead schools. Hancock said she has been networking to battle against the WASL test for six years.

“The thing I have found over the years is when you are vocal about anything that is against what the schools do, if they can’t get you to shut up by penalizing you, they penalize your kids,” Hancock said.

She contends teachers in the past had singled out her children during class and made comments about the family’s anti-WASL activities.

“If we all just be quiet, it’s going to get worse,” Hancock said.

She doesn’t believe the anti-WASL effort has declined, but said she’s seen it become more subtle.

“I’ve seen more people asking questions and petitioning their legislators for some sanity in these tests,” Hancock said. “I haven’t seen more of a stand-up-and-be-counted effort. I’ve seen it more as a backdoor effort.”

Hancock and allies statewide are watching a House bill that would phase out another testing measure, the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. They consider that an effort to make the WASL more prominent.

Years ago, there was more vocalized concern about the WASL.

“It was an unknown when we started,” Stowell said. “It’s not an unknown anymore.”

As a whole, Spokane County’s largest district has been pleased by WASL score improvements.

“We feel we’ve made very strong progress on the WASL, especially at the fourth-grade level,” Stowell said.

While the older grades have not been taking the test as long, “we’re starting to see growth at the middle schools and high schools,” she said.