Step up to WASL math requirement, don't hide from it

AFTER a decade of failure, both houses of the Washington Legislature resoundingly approved bills to eliminate the need for students to pass the 10th-grade mathematics section of the WASL.

In 1999, 33 percent of Washington's 10th-graders passed the Washington Assessment of Student Learning math section; that rate steadily improved until 2004-05 when the scores flattened out around 49 percent.

After no real evidence of progress in the past four years, what do you do? Do you look for another solution, or just hide it away, move on and pretend that it didn't happen? Washington lawmakers are poised to choose the latter rather than look for help.

As it turns out, a highly similar state chose the former. Massachusetts has accepted innovation and has seen its 10th-grade math scores more than double over the past decade.

In the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test, Massachusetts was allowed to participate as its own country and it scores ranked in the top 5 in the world. But as it turns out, that state is not much different from ours.

Washington and Massachusetts are both home to approximately 6.4 million people and are both geographically divided in similar proportion between urban and rural. Boston and Seattle have nearly identical populations as well (about 585,000) and are largely composed of progressive, highly-educated and conscientious citizens. Boston's main industry is higher education and Seattle's is high-tech. Brainy. They're about as similar as states can get.

But Massachusetts students have been outscoring Washington's on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) since the beginning of that test's score reporting in the early 1990s. Badly. They have been outpacing Washington students in all subjects by an average of 8 points per test.

In addition, Massachusetts 10th-graders were equal to ours in math in 1998-99 in comparison of state tests but have steadily climbed to a 74-percent passing rate over the same time that we spent floundering. So what has changed in Massachusetts over that time span?

From 1996-2009, the number of charter schools alone in Massachusetts has risen from 15 to 54. This is only one category of an increasing variety of schools: parochial, pilot, discovery, charter, Horace Mann, private, public, to name a few. Selection of the right school invests all stakeholders in the education of the child and the result is increased student performance.

What is evolving from that is a highly competitive system in which schools are forced to improve or lose students. Now nearly 20 years into these reforms, Massachusetts schools are continuing to get better. A close look at the NAEP scores show its public schools are distancing themselves in all subjects from the national average in each year of the test. Washington remains about the same. No progress.

With the passing of SB 5498 and HB 1562 and the lowering of Washington's educational standard they would mandate, it is time to take a long, hard look at ourselves and figure out what it is we are really trying to do.

Let's set a good example for our youth by being resourceful, bold and willing to break from tradition if we find a better way. It is time to adopt progressive reform measures such as charter schools and other schools of choice for our students who need and want them. Our students will continue to fail without them, and moreover, we have no reason to expect that eliminating a test will improve education in our state.

A model is out there, it has been tried in a highly similar environment, and it is working. How long can we try to hide?