Starting next year, any high-school freshman who wants to take the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning a year early can do so.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson announced yesterday that she will offer that option in spring 2006 as a way to ease pressure on students by giving them more control over when they take the state test.

"It will be kind of a PSAT for the WASL," said Bergeson, referring to the Preliminary SAT, used to help prepare students for the SAT college-admissions exam. But if freshmen pass any one of the four subjects on the WASL — reading, writing, math and science — they won't have to retake that subject on the 10th-grade test.

Bergeson hopes that some students will take the test early to get a sense of what they need to work on. She hopes others will simply want to get it out of the way.

And she wants to get everyone to stop thinking that the WASL is a college-placement test — that when you're done with the WASL, you're done with high school.

"It's a 10th-grade test of foundation skills that we think every kid should have," she said.

The state requires all public-school students in grades 4, 7 and 10 to take the WASL. (And soon it will be given in grades 3-8, and Grade 10, as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.)

Starting in 2008, high-school students will have to pass the reading, writing and math sections on the 10th-grade test as one of the requirements for graduation. This year, however, state legislators are expected to discuss just how high the passing score should be. It now stands at a score of at least 3 out of 4, with a "3" being proficient, and a "4" advanced. There is ongoing debate over the difficulty of the WASL, whether schools are yet providing the instruction students need to pass it, and whether a diploma should depend on a student's score on any one test.

Last year, just 39 percent of 10th-graders passed the reading, writing and math sections.

This year will be the first year that 11th- and 12th-graders can take the test a second time, either because they didn't pass as 10th-graders, or they want to improve their score. (Even though the test isn't yet required for graduation, the scores do go on student transcripts.)

Bergeson said she doesn't need legislative approval to offer the WASL to ninth-graders. She said she'd offer them that opportunity this spring, if not for the logistical problems of moving that fast.

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359