Senate approves WASL alternatives

By Doug Nadvornick, Spokane Public Radio

The Washington Senate on Monday approved changes made by the House to a bill that would allow alternatives to the state student assessment test.

The bill authorizes the state superintendent to determine other ways to assess students who fail the WASL twice so that they can still graduate from high school.

With this year’s sophomores the first to be required to pass the tenth grade WASL in order to graduate, there’s been pressure in Olympia to find ways to help the students who don’t pass. Some wanted the state to throw out the requirement that links WASL passage and graduation. That didn’t happen, but lawmakers did require Superintendent Terry Bergeson to develop new ways of assessing students who don’t pass the test. They approved the use of grades, scores on other standardized tests and portfolios to measure student mastery.

Kent Republican Senator Stephen Johnson calls it a retreat from setting the WASL as the mark for students to reach.

“Now we’ve said this year, for the first time, you really don’t have to pass it at all,” he said. “We want you to give it a try a couple of times to see if you can do it. If you can’t, we’ll just do it based on grades or we’ll do it based on a portfolio of your work product or your homework. Really, if you turn the clock back about 15 years ago, that’s how we graduated people anyway, on the work they’d done in their class and their grades, so how are we doing it much different? I think we’re slipping and sliding back to where we were.”

East King County Republican Senator Cheryl Pflug disagreed.

“I’m convinced that the amendments now before you for concurrence actually increase the rigor,” she said. “They give us a better confidence that alternative assessments will have equal rigor, which has long been the concern of this body.”
The state superintendent’s office is required to have ready by the fall alternative assessment methods.

The Senate vote was 38-to-eight. The bill now goes to the governor for her signature.