Math WASL not too difficult, study says

By Linda Shaw
Seattle Times staff reporter

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The report, done by Achieve, Inc., says that math on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) is less challenging than tests in six other states studied, mainly because the WASL has less algebra and geometry.

On the other hand, the organization found the reading section of the WASL to be on a par with those of the other states, and said the writing test is the best it's seen.

But Achieve judged the math to be the easiest of the three WASL subjects, and that's puzzling to education officials and Achieve itself. Only 44 percent of 10th-graders passed math this year, a lower rate than the other two subjects. And other studies have suggested the WASL is among the toughest math exams in the nation.

"I want to understand how various experts came to different conclusions as to where the assessment ranks," said David Fisher, chairman of a state commission that today will discuss whether to lower the passing score when the WASL becomes a graduation requirement in 2008.

Achieve was surprised, too, said Matt Gandal, executive vice president.

"It's not the high level of content that's making this test difficult for students, because the content demands are relatively low," he said. "There has to be other factors going into what's making the test challenging."

Achieve is a nonprofit organization founded by business leaders and governors. The board of directors includes Gov. Gary Locke and Kerry Killinger, the chairman, president and CEO of Washington Mutual.

It is a proponent of tests like the WASL, but not blindly so, Gandal said. Much of its work is focused on helping states develop good tests and learning standards that reflect what students need to succeed in life and work, he said.

The state commission that Fisher chairs, the Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission, asked Achieve to compare the 10th-grade version of the 2003 WASL to similar tests in the six other states Achieve has studied Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas.

The idea was to assess the WASL's difficulty, which has been questioned since the test was introduced. The student passage rate has gone up over time in all subjects, but many students still fall short. The highest passing rate was in fourth-grade reading, which was 74 percent last year.
 
The Achieve study, however, may raise more questions than it answers.

To Achieve, the study shows that the 10th-grade WASL is not too hard to expect all students to pass before they graduate. It determined the same about the tests in the six other states.

"We didn't find evidence that the standard should be lowered," Gandal said.

That's the message he likely will present today to Fisher and other members of the commission, as they prepare to decide how high the passing bar should be, at least for the purpose of graduation.

The WASL is graded on a scale of 1 to 4, and a 3, or "proficient," is considered passing. It's possible, however, that the commission will lower that to a 2, or "basic," score in some of the subjects.

Fisher said he hoped that the commissioners will make a preliminary decision today, so the public has time to comment before the panel makes a final decision in November.

The Achieve study also comes just as the WASL is an issue in the race for state superintendent of public instruction. Former superintendent Judith Billings has made the test a centerpiece of her campaign to unseat incumbent Terry Bergeson, echoing questions also raised by the state's largest teachers union about whether any single test should have such high stakes for students.

Billings also says the WASL is too difficult to be a graduation requirement. She cites a study by the Northwest Evaluation Association in Portland that said the 10th-grade math WASL was a very difficult exam.

The Portland researchers found that students who passed the exam had scores equivalent to the 73rd percentile on the Portland association's own test.

"That's a really, really good performance from a student who is exiting a geometry class," said Gage Kingsbury, director of research for the Northwest Evaluation Association. In Idaho, he said, the association analyzed the scores of students who went to college, and "most didn't have that high of a score."

The association also concluded that math was much more difficult than reading on the WASL.

The Achieve study, however, did a different type of analysis. It evaluated the content of the questions, something the Northwest Evaluation Association didn't do. Achieve also evaluated the difficulty of the questions, which is a different thing. On reading tests, for example, it is possible to ask easy questions about a difficult passage, or hard questions about easy passages.

In reading, Achieve said the 10th-grade WASL has fewer "basic comprehension" questions than the other states, but its reading passages are at a lower level. In other words, the WASL questions tend to be harder, but the passages are easier than in other states.

Like in all the states it studied, Achieve said the WASL is far less challenging that the ACT college admissions test, and more closely resembles the test ACT uses for eighth- and ninth-graders.

Achieve praised the WASL writing test as "exemplary" because it contains no multiple-choice questions, and because Washington is the only state to test writing separately from reading.

In math, however, Achieve said the WASL devotes only 41 percent of its points to algebra and geometry/measurement, compared with an average of 67 percent in the other six states. And it said the test has no advanced algebra questions.

Washington "wasn't alone in not pushing too far into Algebra II," Gandal said. But the state still did less than others in adopting the subject matter.

In all the states, Achieve's report said, the math tests cover what students in many other countries generally learn in middle school.

Assessment experts in the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction said that they're not sure Achieve took into account the WASL's emphasis on problem-solving, and on measuring students' abilities to communicate how they arrived at some of their answers.

"They just looked past those skills ... and looked into what was the math content," said Greg Hall, assistant superintendent for assessment and research.

Catherine Taylor, a University of Washington professor who works with the superintendent's office on the WASL, said that students don't need as much algebra and geometry as Achieve says they do.

"I certainly agree that we don't have Algebra II in here, or a lot of hard algebra," she said. "I don't agree that everyone has to have them to have a job in the 21st century."

Gandal, however, said Achieve arrived at its conclusions after talking with colleges and employers. And he said Achieve took into account the level of problem-solving that the WASL requires. The group found that aspect of the test about the same as other state tests.

But Gandal also acknowledged that Achieve's analysis may not be capturing the reason why so many students are failing the test.

Achieve wondered whether students don't have enough familiarity with the type of questions on the WASL, or whether students perhaps lack the motivation to finish the multistep problems or write out how they arrived at their answers, Gandal said.

The researchers noted that in a representative sampling of students, about 80 percent of them scored zero on the second-to-last question on the test, indicating few even tried to answer it.

But 82 percent of the sample answered the last question, which was multiple choice, and got it right.

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com