WASL scores steady, but more schools in trouble with No Child Left Behind

The Washington Assessment of Student Learning is going out with a whimper.

The results from the final WASL exam, released Friday, show some ups and downs, but overall, the pass rates remained the same in many subjects and grades, as they have for the past few years.

"Plateauing or flat is a pretty good description," said Alan Burke, a deputy superintendent with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

And that was the good news.

The bad news is that the number of Washington schools on the federal "needs improvement" list has nearly doubled — from 618 in 2008 to 1,073 this year.

Randy Dorn, state superintendent of public instruction, blamed that on flaws in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, not flaws in the schools.

"The federal government is actually failing us," he said.

On the WASL, math and science performance continue to be areas of serious concern, especially in grade 10, where the passage rate dropped for the second year in a row. Just 45 percent of 10th graders passed this year.

"We have to really question every aspect of what we're doing," said Mary Jean Ryan, chairwoman of the state Board of Education. "We're sustaining performance now at very low levels."

To many, the drop was puzzling.

"We haven't really done anything differently in the last eight or nine years," said Janey Andrews, a secondary math curriculum and technology coach in the Bellevue School District, one of many Seattle-area districts where the pass rates in 10th grade math dropped.

As usual, there were WASL bright spots, too. Despite the recent plateau, Dorn said scores have risen dramatically over the past 10 years, especially in writing, and he also noted that Washington students consistently do well on national exams such as the SAT college-entrance test.

He said he's committed to making sure students continue their progress on the exams that will replace the WASL, which will be similar to the old test in many respects.

The state now needs "Education Reform II," he said, which will require at least a billion-dollar increase in the state's annual budget for public schools.

Several schools and school districts were happy with their progress this past year.

Aviation High in the Highline School District scored third-highest in the state in math and in science among schools where 50 or more students were tested.

And Seattle Public Schools outperformed the state average in 19 of the 20 tested subjects and grades, which is unusual for an urban school district.

Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson attributed that success to many factors, especially using testing data to improve teaching and teachers working more collaboratively.

Scores also jumped significantly at several Seattle schools, including Aki Kurose Middle School, which had gains of more than 10 percentage points in most grades and subjects.

Serious students

Principal Mia Williams attributed that partly to a big change in how seriously students approach their studies.

One day, she said, she was about to reprimand a group of students she thought were using their cellphones at school. Instead, they were showing each other their graphing calculators.

But Aki Kurose also is one of the schools on the federal government's "needs improvement" list — one example that improvement doesn't always count when it comes to No Child Left Behind.

"The thing you have to remember is that with AYP, it's all or nothing," said Goodloe-Johnson, referring to the law's requirement that all schools make "adequate yearly progress."

Under No Child Left Behind, schools must hit as many as 37 requirements each year to make AYP. Those requirements mostly involve test scores but also how many students take the tests and, depending on grade level, on attendance or graduation rates.

Schools that receive money from the federal Title I program face increasingly severe sanctions if they fall short. Title I provides dollars to schools with a high percentage of low-income students. In Washington, 88 schools have been on the list long enough that their districts, under the law, are supposed to make major changes, such as restructuring programs and replacing staff. In Seattle, those include Aki Kurose and Alternative School No. 1.

In Bellevue, Sammamish High is another example of incongruities arising from the No Child Left Behind law. Sammamish has been on the "needs improvement" list for several years. Yet it also was recently ranked No. 48 on Newsweek's list of top high schools.

"I hope that no person in our school community takes the AYP designations as a realistic measure of the high-quality learning that is occurring in our schools," said Issaquah School District Superintendent Steve Rasmussen. Statewide, 60 percent of schools fell short in one or more areas.

New tests

The 12-year-old WASL grew out of a 1993 state law that mandated higher learning standards for students.

Next year, it will be replaced by two new tests, the Measurements of Student Progress and the High School Proficiency Exam.

Like the WASL, the new exams will cover reading and math and, in some grades, writing and science, too. They also will be given in grades 3 through 8, and 10.

They will be significantly shorter than the WASL, but Dorn said they will be as difficult, if not more.

They still will be used to track the progress of students and schools, even though many consider such standardized tests an imperfect tool.

Schools with a large number of rich families, for example, generally have higher standardized test scores than schools with students whose families struggle to get by. That raises questions about whether it's fair to judge a school's quality by test scores.

And high-school students still will have to pass the new tests to graduate.

Ryan, the chairwoman of the state Board of Education, said she found this year's WASL results sobering, but hopes educators aren't discouraged by them.

"I'm hoping people feel motivated to up the effort, and help a lot more kids get a good math and science foundation," she said.

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