What's Wrong with the WASL? and Why We Must Scrap It!

Tacoma Socialist Alternative has begun its' campaign to end the WASL. This standardized test costs Washington tax payers over $100 million a year, and contributes nothing to education. We are currently gathering as much support as we can for a boycott movement in the fall. The following is an excerpt from our informational pamphlet on the WASL. If you are interested in getting involved, email us at ScraptheWASL@gmail.com

What's Wrong with the WASL? and Why We Must Scrap It!


The Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) is a standardized educational assessment run by a private company Pearson Education. It meets requirements of Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and is also used as a high school graduation examination in Washington State.

In 2008, for the first time ever in Washington State history satisfactory completion of the WASL reading and writing examinations was a mandatory high school graduation requirement. Previously, reading, writing, and math were all going to be required, but this plan was jettisoned in 2007 when the failure rate on the math assessment reached 50%.

The WASL is a waste of money, time and resources

Money—Every dollar spent on the WASL is a dollar that is not spent in the classroom. According to research commissioned by the Washington Education Association1, the state of Washington has spent well over one billion dollars on developing, proctoring, and scoring the WASL since 1993.

For the 2006-2007 school year this figure is estimated by the WEA to be $113,602,848. Consider that Seattle Schools face a shortfall of $22 million for 2008-2009, while Tacoma Public School District faces a $6.6 million shortfall.

For a class of twenty-eight seventh graders taking three assessments (Reading, Writing, and Math), this equals $144.96 per student—over $4,050.00 per classroom. Think of how$4,050.00 could be used in your child's classroom.

Time—Because of the long delay between when students take the tests and when the scores come back (four to six months later), the results are useless to classroom teachers for instructional purposes. Teachers are unable to discern what items the student needs remediation on.

Resources—With an emphasis on raising test scores, teachers increasingly teach the same skills over and over for struggling students instead of providing the breadth and depth that students deserve. The WASL rewards rote memorization and formulaic thinking. It is an impediment to the kind of educational reform Washington State actually needs and does nothing to contribute to improved educational outcomes for students.

The WASL means less money for needy schools:

Following the free market logic underlying No Child Left Behind, low performing schools would see a flight of students as parents use vouchers to help pay for private schooling or send their students to “higher performing” schools. A decrease in enrollment at low performing schools would mean a commensurate decrease in the amount of funding available to these schools.

This leads to a paradox where the schools that need the most help and resources will actually get less and less help from the state, thus leading to the eventual collapse of these schools and the demand to weaken public education though privatization.

The WASL stigmatizes working-class and racial minority communities

According to Michael W. Apple, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, only by “eliminating poverty through greater economic parity, establishing effective and much more equal health and housing programs... only by tackling these issues together can substantive progress be made”2 in school reform.

When examining standardized test scores like the WASL it is helpful to understand that scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic status.

The following statistics are for 10th grade math scores in 20043:

At International Community School, Lake Washington School District: 0.5% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, 100% “met standard” on the math section of the WASL.

At Cleveland High School, Seattle: 63% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, 23.1% “met standard” on the math section of the WASL.

Also, an overwhelming majority, nearly three-quarters of the state's African American and Latino students who took the 10th-grade WASL failed at least one the subjects needed to graduate.

In essence, the WASL is an assessment of the level of socioeconomic power and access to additional resources (private tutoring, educated parents, and parental supervision after school) within a community—not of the intellect or achievement of the students therein.

The WASL has been heralded by its supporters as a remedy to the ills of public education in Washington State, when in actuality it has simply exacerbated previous ills and created far more problems than it has solved

We are not against testing and holding schools accountable

Teachers need tests and means for assessing a student’s progress and helping students identify areas of strength and weakness. However, the one-size fits all standardized tests created by corporate interests are completely out of touch with the needs of different students and ultimately counter-productive.

National guidelines for basic curriculum are welcome (as long as they do not stifle teacher and student creativity). But the key is we need to return to teacher evaluation of students because teachers—in consultation with parents, educational planners, and students—know best how to help each individual student develop their skills, confidence, and potential as a fully rounded-out human being.

Campaigning Against the WASL

The way to defeat the WASL is by the public demonstrating its absolute opposition to it. We need to parents, teachers and student to take this message out broadly into the community through a public outreach campaign and organizing school-by-school public meetings.

If students, with the full support of parents, refuse to take the WASL, then there would be no test scores to act upon, The 2009 WASL will fail. We need to raise this threat if the legislature won’t act before then. This would send a very clear message to Olympia that the public wants the WASL scrapped. It would stop any further students being denied graduation due to their test scores in 2009.

The WASL

* A waste of money, time and resources
* It means less money for needy schools
* It ignores class injustice
* It punishes schools for non-school factors
* It stigmatizes working class communities
* It’s a barrier to graduation

Parents, teachers, and students are united.

It’s time for the WASL to go!

Get Involved:

* Build the campaign in your school, and in your community.

* Speak to friends and neighbors.

* Link up with teachers and parents and student in your community.

* Organize a speaker to attend your PTSA or at your school.


Contact the campaign at:

ScraptheWASL@gmail.com.


This flyer was written by teacher, parent and student members of Tacoma Socialist Alternative.


You can reach us Tacomasocialists@gmail.com, our national website is: www. socialistalternative. org.


If you want more information, we have just published an in-depth analysis of the WASL. What’s Wrong with the WASL, and Why we should Scrap it. It is available at $1.50, or we can send you an electronic version.

None of the material we are publishing is copywrited. So feel free to use all or parts of it as part of your own communication about the WASL.