9486 in the collection  

PEN Writes the Yakima Herald

Parent Empowerment Network
P. O. Box 494, Spanaway, Washington
Representing Children; Empowering Parents
May 14, 2007

Yakima Herald-Republic
114 N. 4th Street
Yakima, WA 98901

Dear Mr. Shepard, Ms. Jenkins, Mr. Lee, and Ms. Muir;

Mutual admiration society or journalistic interview?
Buying the WASL

With all due respect, in listening to "A Conversation with Governor Christine Gregoire," we are stunned by the lack of knowledge and understanding of educational issues expressed by the Yakima Herald Editors and the lack of journalistic integrity in your interview of the governor. At no time during the WASL segment of the interview did one of you challenge the governor. For that matter, none of your colleagues on editorial boards across the state have cared to question the data and accompanying information presented by the governor or the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

In this letter, we have cited several of your questions and/or statements to the governor and responded to them, in order to provide clarifying information and our views, backed by evidence from multiple sources. We have also selected many of the governor’s responses to refute, in an effort to reveal her lack of educational understanding and depth. We respect the governor’s acumen in legal matters, but education is not her forte-- notwithstanding her positions as chair of the National Governor’s Association’s Education, Early Childhood and Workforce Committee and one of two "Lead Governors on No Child Left Behind."
http://tinyurl.com/2toveo

If students in Washington State are to be held accountable to meeting standards, the adult leaders in Washington State must first be held accountable to the very important standards of honesty and accuracy.

(For ease of access, hard copies of all web linked documents are provided with this hand delivered letter and are arranged in the order in which they have been introduced.)

Yakima Herald: "…I would think there is a certain number of average citizens who would look at a simple majority for levies and massive investments in public education and say, ‘Okay,’ and then educators lobbying, many educators, lobbying very hard for delaying standards, and say, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’"

Governor: "I’m one of those citizens."

It is a complete non sequitur to question the motives of educators who petition for fairness for students and better funding for schools at the same time. You and the governor are conveniently ignoring the late 1970’s rulings of Judge Doran, which required the state to provide equitable school funding and ample educational services to all students. The subsequent failure of the legislature to comply with those rulings, for the last 30 years or so, combined with the push for high-stakes, student-led accountability has created an untenable situation for educators, parents, and, most importantly, students.

If there is a glut of money being expended on public education, it is in the areas of assessment and remediation toward the assessment—not instruction toward the standards but remediation toward the assessment. And it need not be so. If money had been spent on individualized tutorial support for struggling students we might be looking at better results for students now in the lower tiers of academic achievement. The WASL system has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Richland School District figured the cost of WASL to the state and districts at approximately $60 million per year, including district support services. In response to a public disclosure request, OSPI provided a figure of $72 per student for the 4 part high school exam-- the cost of a text book.

A major flaw in your statement that educators are lobbying hard to delay standards, and the governor’s agreement with it, is that you and the governor are deliberately inter-changing the term standards with the tool to measure them in an attempt to confuse the public. Not one person or organization calling for the delay of WASL reading and writing graduation requirements suggested delay of standards, anymore than the governor and state superintendent suggested a delay of standards with their proposed delay of the math WASL requirement. Not one educator or parent recommended that Washington “throw out 14 years of investment in standards.”

When the radar gun is poorly calibrated and the State Patrol decides a new one is needed, that doesn’t mean the speed limit is thrown out. Many people have determined, based on more than a preponderance of evidence, that the current WASL is flawed and needs to be held up to a study of validity and reliability independent of OSPI (something that has never taken place) before students are denied diplomas.

WASL is not diagnostic; it takes months to score; it returns no usable data for schools; validity of scores is questionable at best (according to WASL technical report, up to 14,000, 2006,10th grade scores false pass or false fail). Best practices in assessment are known but are being ignored by the state superintendent and governor. If you are interested in honest indagation of WASL, assessment, and accountability, we suggest you invite the Richland School Board for an interview, so that they may provide comprehensive information on up-to-date, cost effective, diagnostic assessment tools.

Governor: "I adore Ben Soria. I think he’s a great superintendent…I just fundamentally disagree…"

Could the governor’s fundamental disagreement with Superintendent Soria be caused by her lack of educational experience?

Comparing the education backgrounds of Governor Gregoire and Superintendent Soria, it is important to note that Governor Gregoire graduated from college with a teaching degree but never taught. Superintendent Soria has served as Superintendent of Yakima Public Schools since July 2000. Previously he was Deputy Superintendent of the Tacoma School District. "Other major education administration experience includes the position of Associate Superintendent for the Albuquerque Public Schools, …Program Manager for the San Francisco Unified School District,…and Director of Bilingual and Compensatory Education, and Community Relations for the Santa Ana Unified School District…" "Mr. Soria was the recipient of the Washington Association of School Administrators, Robert Handy “Most Effective Administrator Award” for large school districts in the State of Washington for the 2002-03 school year."
http://tinyurl.com/3bxet3 [pdf] (see page 6)

For the record, the governor also fundamentally disagrees with her own political party, which included in its state platform education plank, "abandoning WASL as a high school graduation requirement."

http://tinyurl.com/yvasrr [pdf] (see page 6)

Governor: "…and the way it was brought in the last week of the legislative session…"

It is unfair for the governor to imply that Superintendent Soria waited until the end of session to bring his concerns. The governor is aware that Superintendent Soria was already speaking to key legislative members and that he had met with the caucus about his concerns, as early as 2006. The governor was well aware of the reading and writing dilemma and the true numbers and had made it clear to legislators early in the session and before the session that she would not support a delay in reading and writing. It was the governor’s indisposition to engage in meaningful discussions with individuals and organizations that tied the legislative members’ hands, up until the final hours.

Originally, the governor’s excuse for paying the superintendents no mind was, "This is a relatively small number of superintendents that have come forward."
http://www.komotv.com/news/7081271.html In truth, several bills were presented early in the session that would have delayed or stopped all of WASL as a graduation requirement. Many organizations, parents, and teachers, and several superintendents, testified in support of those bills and were hopeful that reading and writing delay might be debated on the floor of the Senate or House and win approval. Senator Clements spoke compellingly for a reprieve from the entire graduation requirement. During testimony on many of these bills, the governor’s key education staff remained publicly silent on the issue of reading and writing delay. In the end, on Sine Die, the majority in the legislature caved to the misguided whim of the Democratic governor who threatened veto or special session in the event of reading and writing delay.

The lack of cooperation from the state superintendent further exacerbated a situation wherein legislators were on their own, attempting to solve not only the graduation dilemma but 14 years of WASL mess, in one legislative session. In the end, a bill rewritten 37 times was the best 147 legislators with varying degrees of knowledge on education issues could do.

If anyone needs a lesson in timeliness, it is the governor who needs to examine her 12th year plan to train teachers in how to teach reading and writing to students who have failed the WASL (up to 4 times by then). It is ludicrous to think that 2 or 3 days of professional development will provide the silver bullet that 12 years of instruction have failed to provide for thousands of students who are failing reading and writing WASL.

Let’s review recent history: The failed $28,000,000 summer school project (PAS), of 2006, demonstrated the problem with 11th year cramming for the WASL. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) report on PAS provides ample evidence on the program’s dismal failure.
http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-12-2202.pdf [pdf]. In fact, if one researches deeper into the issue of test preparation, one finds that, in 1999, the Washington Education Research Association (WERA) produced a white paper on testing protocol which posits that test prep for the sake of test prep in the form that PAS provided is unethical.
http://www.wera-web.org/pages/publications/WERA_Test_Ethics.pdf [pdf] PEN possesses evidence that low performing students were discouraged from attending the summer school, because it was designed for only those students scoring in the high 2 range on their first WASL attempt.

Governor: "And, I might add, when you really look at the numbers, I’m sorry, poor kids are doing well on reading and writing…Increases are 'amazing!'"

It is by now apparent that the governor chooses not to "really look at the numbers." The governor cited an 85% pass rate for reading and a 70-something percent pass rate for "poor kids" in reading. The level of our displeasure with your interviewing technique rose exponentially when you allowed the governor to get away with putting forth her usual egregiously padded percentages, which she and you have been provided by the Office of Superintendent. Incidentally, we wonder if any editorial board member interviewing the governor in the last month has thought to ask about the discrepancy between the 85% reading pass rate she now cites and the 87% reading pass rate provided in November by OSPI. It may only be a discrepancy of two percentage points, but of the 68,508 students in the count used by OSPI, a 2% discrepancy means 1,370 students are unaccounted for. Would that a 2% discrepancy were all that existed!

Unless you were only interested in taking the governor at face value and not wanting to question her understanding of the issues and the outcry for delay in reading and writing, we suggest you should have made yourselves aware that OSPI’s WASL reading and writing pass rates have been challenged by Washington Education Association (WEA), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Equitable Opportunity Caucus (EOC), Parent Empowerment Network (PEN), and others. For the record, only 59% of low income students in the class of 2008, enrolled in 10th grade in 2005-06, have passed the reading WASL. The percentage is lower for writing. http://tinyurl.com/3xtnv6

A glaring example of the contradictions and discrepancies within OSPI data is exposed when one compares the Report Card pass numbers in reading for "low-income" students to pass rates in the August 2006 WASL Summary report. The Washington State Report Card (spring numbers only) reports 14,178 "low-income" students passed the reading WASL. http://tinyurl.com/33z8j9
The cumulative report for spring and August WASL passage rates, (Table 8) released November 8, 2006 reports 13,952 "low-income" students passed reading WASL.
http://tinyurl.com/367fq3
[pdf]

On February 9, 2007, PEN hand delivered a letter to Governor Gregoire’s office asking if she was "really" looking at the numbers or just swallowing propaganda dished up by OSPI:



As a governor who believes in high standards and quality individualized education for every student, the question you should be asking is: "Was my staff given raw data and complete information, which they in turn analyzed in order to provide me with the defendable conclusion and stated position that Washington students have made 'amazing' progress in reading and writing, or did my staff simply accept and provide me with readymade OSPI conclusions?"




PEN presented the true numbers to the legislature and the governor on several occasions and called on the state superintendent to provide "the real numbers of WASL failure…and…find and account for the lost students of the class of 2008," in an "open letter," on March 13, 2007.

http://www.mothersagainstwasl.org/bergeson_letter_3-13-07.doc

The percentages used by the state superintendent and the governor are based on the number of students who have "complete test records." According to the ACLU report, which is based on 9th grade enrollment numbers, fewer than 50% of Hispanic, African American, and Native American students have passed reading WASL.
http://tinyurl.com/2kpcmb
Surely you do not need to be told that the majority in these categories of students come from low income homes. As WEA states in its "2006 Student Achievement" document, "Decisions for all students should be based on research and data that include and reflect all students." The state teachers’ union wants real accountability for the achievement levels of all students. The governor and state superintendent are only using the test scores of some students to claim success for all.

Recently, in its end-of-legislative-session press release, OSPI, evidently beginning to rethink inflated numbers, stated, "More than three-quarters of the students in the class of 2008 have already passed both the reading and writing portions of the WASL."
http://tinyurl.com/37ltfh
This, after claiming throughout the legislative session (and apparently convincing the governor and the media) pass rates of 87% for reading and 86% for writing. We don’t know about you, but we wonder why the state superintendent would now downsize the wonderful gains by using the “three-quarters” statement, if she felt she could defend 87% and 86%.

An approximate three quarters pass rate for the 79,869 11th graders, as of the October 2006 headcount, leaves 19,967 due to be denied a diploma next year because of reading and/or writing WASL failure.

The variation in reported pass rates is best observed in the WSIPP report, "How Different Base Populations Affect WASL Results"
http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-11-2201.pdf, which shows large numbers of students being left out of the count, regardless of whether the count is being taken to fulfill state or federal accountability requirements.

Using different base student populations, the percentage of 10th graders who met standard on the WASL in spring 2006 is as follows:



As a percentage of students who were slated to take the WASL, 44.9 percent met standard.

Excluding students with OSPI-approved exemptions, 50.5 percent of students met standard.

As a percentage of students who completed an assessment, 53.6 percent
met standard.

Using guidelines established by the No Child Left Behind Act, 47.2 percent of students met standard.



Is it any wonder that, in its report on education, entitled "Leaders and Laggards," the US Chamber of Commerce awarded Washington State a grade of C in "Truth in Advertising about Student Proficiency"? Unfortunately, this C grade for truth didn’t dissuade the Chamber from awarding Washington an A in "Academic Achievement of Low Income and Minority Students" and "Return on Investment." For the record, Washington State was also awarded a C for "Rigor of Standards."
http://www.uschamber.com/icw/reportcard/default

The governor’s office has never responded to PEN’s presentation of the true WASL failure rates by low income, minority, and special education students. If the governor were to actually acknowledge that over 50% of the students in these categories have not passed reading and/or writing, she might find herself morally forced to recognize the justification for delaying all of WASL.

Governor: "But I’m not giving up on kids because they’re poor."

Frankly, we find the governor’s consistent use of the term "poor kids" demeaning. The use of a label such as this reduces our young people to a class easily relegated to the throw away heap. This is what happens when the diploma is denied based on a single test. The hopes and dreams of thousands of students will be dashed as the state disregards and discards their 13 years of hard work in our public schools and every effort of the professional educators who worked with them.

Both you and the governor appear to be unfamiliar with the "Coleman Study" of 1966.
http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/cocoon/ICPSR-STUDY/06389.xml
The study, commissioned by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and conducted by James Coleman of John Hopkins University, concluded that both family and peer circumstances have an overwhelming influence on educational achievement, so much so that the school itself is hard pressed to overcome those circumstances. Another finding of the study which is especially applicable to the WASL situation is that the student who feels power over his or her own destiny is far more apt to find educational success. A test that labels our low income, minority, and special education students as failures, beginning in third grade, has little to do with providing students a feeling of power over educational destiny.

The need for policymakers to step back from punitive accountability measures and work harder for students living in poverty is documented in the WSIPP report, "Association between Poverty and WASL Performance by Race/Ethnicity,"
http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/07-01-2205.pdf . This report shows clearly that Washington State has not yet found the will, the resources, or the expertise to reach and provide equitable and adequate educational services to ensure that students living in poverty are afforded the opportunity to meet the same "standards" as students who are not living in poverty.

Of course, technically, if the state superintendent admits a 75% pass rate overall and the governor clings to a 70-something percent pass rate for "poor kids," the economic achievement gap has been closed! Were this "truth in advertising," this polemic would be unnecessary.

Governor: "They flunk out today!"

How dare the governor justify next year’s denial of diplomas with the excuse that "they flunk out today!" And how dare you allow her to get away with this statement without questioning the purpose of reform and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on WASL and its appendages! Apparently, the governor has forgotten that the goal of 1993 school reform was to hold the system and students accountable and to also help struggling schools and struggling students succeed, not give up on those who "flunk out," and push more out as they fail to pass a single test.

In fact, the governor speaks out of both sides of her mouth on the issue of students living in poverty. From one side her Washington Learns report calls for early learning programs to help children living in poverty; from the other side she claims that a supermajority of low income students in the class of 2008 have been perfectly prepared to meet the standards in reading and writing. From one side, she claims she will not give up on students who are poor; from the other side she says, "They flunk out today," implying that adding the wrong of denying diplomas to those who do complete high school to the wrong of students failing to stay in school will somehow equal a right.

The ability to reference poverty from the personal experience of growing up in Auburn in the 1950s does not qualify the governor to speak with authority of the needs of diverse students living in poverty throughout the state in 2007.

The 42 district superintendents who signed the petition, and their colleagues in districts throughout the state, know the challenges children living in poverty bring to the institution. A successful institutional perspective and the development of successful programs to serve today’s students living in poverty require an understanding of complex educational realities. For instance, the WSIPP, "Association between Poverty and WASL Performance…" report summarizes:



For reading and writing, poverty is a much stronger predictor of low WASL performance than is race/ethnicity (American Indian, Hispanic, and African American).

For math, the relative impact of poverty and race/ethnicity on WASL performance is roughly equivalent.



Considering the profound challenges that children living in poverty face and bring to the institution, and given the over 40 years (since the Coleman Study was released and Title 1 began) of experimenting with educational models in a quest to discover how best to serve these students, the governor’s simplistic call to "find a way to get at those kids" defies our sense of reason. Hearing the governor make superficial statements about having come from "humble beginnings" and about the legislators having come from "moderate beginnings" provides a glimpse of her "pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps," pre-Great Society mentality. Of course no one gave up on the future governor or future legislators! And no one denied them a diploma because they did not pass a single paper and pencil test even after five attempts.

WASL was not a gatekeeper in the high school careers of the governor, editors of major newspapers, legislators, or Washington State’s big business leaders. Today’s adults were not removed from choir or band or woodshop or art or PE or drama or journalism or advanced civics, where they found success and engagement, to be placed in remedial WASL classes. They were not mocked in front of their peers for their parents’ decision to opt them out or left to feel humiliated because they were not called to the front of the auditorium with the WASL winners who passed all 3 sections. They were not denied field trips, class parties, bathroom breaks, and recess in the name of WASL—all measures documented repeatedly during WASL’s existence. Yet, here we are today, the vast majority of us, productive citizens in the 21st century.

If the challenges faced by students living in poverty are an inconvenient truth to those pushing standardized outcomes from our public schools, it is up to the press (the seekers of the truth), educators, and advocacy organizations to continually find the truth and demand that our elected officials recognize and face the truth so that policy decisions they advance are in the best interest of all of our young citizens.

In her interview with The Columbian, the governor stated, "We’re simply delaying failure for these children when we don’t hold them to these standards." If this kind of "fail them now or fail them later" logic is not a statement of "giving up," we don’t know what is! Fortunately for our students, failing WASL does not equate to failure in life. It does not even equate to being "substandard." It simply means that on a certain day taking a certain test, the student did not provide the answer that a WASL scorer, typically not an educator, was told to look for while spending 8 hours staring at a computer screen and being told to keep pace or look for other work.

Governor: "And so, I’ve got money that I’ve invested to try and research best practices with English as a second language students."

It is not necessary to spend money researching best practices for ELL students. OSPI and our state universities possess all the research necessary to provide K-12 schools with the information to develop programs to successfully serve bilingual students. The sad truth is that funding one more study is far cheaper than actually providing the needed services to students—and it lulls the public into believing that something is actually being done to improve educational attainment for "poor kids" or "English as a second language students."

It is past time for politicians to provide the monetary resources to schools for the hiring of qualified staff to teach appropriate supplemental programs. Only through adequate, quality language acquisition programs will our ELL students acquire the academic language proficiency required to perform at a high academic level. Judge Doran ruled, 30 years ago, that bilingual education is part of basic education programming for students who enter public school speaking a primary language other than English, yet lawmakers have never fully funded bilingual education.

Governor: "Let’s do what’s right with regard to our special needs children."

In August 1998, Dr. Richard Stiggins of the Assessment Training Institute wrote to the state superintendent and informed her that making students sit through an exam when it was known that they would score near zero was "immoral" and "unsound pedagogically." Nine years later… the state superintendent has written an "action plan," dated March 9, 2007, to present a legislative proposal to delay all WASL graduation requirements until 2011 for students in the State Transitional Bilingual Instructional Program. This assumes that students in this program have not already given up on a diploma by the time the legislature convenes for its 2008 session after possibly being placed in front of a 10th grade WASL they could not decipher four times.

As for assessment of special needs students, the US Department of Education denied the plan OSPI had to provide Developmentally Appropriate WASL testing, and, in a letter dated March 30, 2007, stated:



On January 22-23, 2007, the peer reviewers and Department staff evaluated Washington's additional submission and found, based on the evidence received, that it still does not meet all the statutory and regulatory requirements of Section 1111(b)(1) and (3) of the ESEA. Specifically, the peer review of this evidence suggests that there remain concerns regarding alignment of the WAAS-Portfolio to grade-level content and alternate academic achievement standards.



In the list of required documentation attached to the same letter, the US Dept. requesting that OSPI provide:



Documentation of the validity and reliability of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) at grades 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10.



http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/nclbfinalassess/wa4.html

If the US Dept. of Education has not been satisfied that the 10th grade WASL is valid and reliable, why should parents, teachers and students believe differently?

The majority of students in Special Education programs take the WASL without modification or accommodation. The majority of students in Special Education must pass the WASL in order to receive a diploma. Students in Special Education who are successfully assessed with the WAAS Portfolio receive a Certificate of Individual Achievement rather than a Certificate of Academic Achievement. Only 42.8% of 2006, grade 10 students eligible for the WAAS Portfolio passed the WAAS reading assessment.
http://tinyurl.com/22uqjd
Governor: "I don’t understand what we were doing with math. How did we ever expect that we could have the curricula at the discretion of every school in the state—every school?"

Yakima Herald: "Think we’ll ever get to a place where we get rid of this method? Here in the local school district they’re all for local control and local curriculum and stuff like this."

Local control of curriculum—it’s the law. And it is not "at the discretion of every school in the state." Locally elected school boards, who are able to understand the needs of their communities far better than the governor or the legislature or the state superintendent, are legally and rightfully responsible for school curricula. Let us examine the law:



(2) In conformance with the provisions of Title 28A RCW, as now or hereafter amended, it shall be the responsibility of each common school district board of directors to adopt policies to:



(e) Establish final curriculum standards consistent with law and rules of the superintendent of public instruction, relevant to the particular needs of district students or the unusual characteristics of the district, and ensuring a quality education for each student in the district; and

(f) Evaluate teaching materials, including text books, teaching aids, handouts, or other printed material, in public hearing upon complaint by parents, guardians or custodians of students who consider dissemination of such material to students objectionable.

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=28A.150.230






Governor: "We’re developing no more than three curricula and there’s no option. You have to choose one of the three curricula. We are going to teach our teachers to that to include coaches in the classroom and then teach our students to that curriculum and we’re gonna get out of the math war."

End of debate! The governor and the state superintendent know best. Did any of you think to question the idea that the state is “developing” not selecting curriculum? Are Washington’s standards so out of sync with the rest of the country that our state leaders need to “develop” three curricula?

The governor needs to understand the difference between standards and standardized curriculum and the limitations of her office and the OSPI. What she is proposing is top-down, pre-packaged micromanagement. It denies that teaching is a profession and it’s harmful to children and other living things. Newly approved legislation does require OSPI to present no more than three recommended math curricula to the State Board of Education. However, the following section of HB 1906 (passed by the Senate on 4/11/07 and the House on 4/17/07 and signed by the governor on 5/09/07) maintains final local control of curricula:



New section. Sec. 1
(9) Nothing in this section requires a school district to use one of the recommended curricula under subsection (7) of this section. However, the statewide accountability plan adopted by the state board of education under RCW 28A.305.130 shall recommend conditions under which school districts should be required to use one of the recommended curricula. The plan shall also describe the conditions for exception to the curriculum requirement, such as the use of integrated academic and career and technical education curriculum. Required use of the recommended curricula as an intervention strategy must be authorized by the legislature as required by RCW 28A.305.130(4)(e) before implementation.



http://tinyurl.com/ywc5wa

Perhaps this is the place to bring to your attention the role and stature of WSIPP. It is not a tool of the teacher’s union or of any other organization arguing against use of WASL.



The Washington Legislature created the Washington State Institute for Public Policy in 1983. The Institute is governed by a Board of Directors that represents the legislature, governor, and public universities. The Board guides the development of all Institute activities.

To "increase understanding of the students who did not meet the standard in one or more areas of assessment," the 2006 Washington State Legislature directed the Institute to conduct a "review and statistical analysis of Washington assessment of student learning data." The study direction also calls for a review of "options to augment the current system of assessments to provide additional opportunities for students to demonstrate that they have met the state learning standards." (SSB 6618)



Has the governor or her education staff read any of the WSIPP reports on WASL? If they had read the report on curriculum alignment, it would be clear to them that applying their logic to justify the postponement of math, based on lack of curriculum alignment, there would be greater justification for delay in reading. According to WSIPP’s report on curriculum alignment:



The degree of textbook alignment fluctuates across grade levels more for reading than for math.

There is an inverse relationship between textbook alignment and grade level for math— that is, the alignment of math textbooks to GLEs is less extensive at higher grade levels.

Nevertheless, more than 50 percent of textbook ratings for math were strongly or adequately aligned in each grade level.

Conversely, fewer than 50 percent of ratings for 1st-, 4th-, 8th-, and 10th grade reading textbooks were strongly or adequately aligned.




http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/07-01-2201.pdf

The premise that math WASL is a failure because curriculum is not aligned is further disproven in districts where state recommended math curricula were adopted early in the reform process. Bethel School District was quick to adopt WASL-driven math curriculum. Only 39.2% of Bethel’s 10th graders passed the math WASL in spring 2006, 11.8% below the state average. 33% of Bethel’s 7th graders passed Math, 15.5% below the state average. All of this WASL-aligned math curriculum came with mandatory teacher training and forced implementation by the district.

Governor: "We don’t have a system that works right now."

If the governor meant this statement only for math and science, she obviously has not looked at Washington’s flat-lined scores on the reading section of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). If she had, she would realize that passage of the WASL reading test means very little due to a lowered standard over the years. Have any of you investigated and compared WASL claims with NAEP results?
http://www.k12.wa.us/assessment/NAEP/Reports.aspx

For instance, from the 2005 NAEP reading report: "Washington’s eighth graders maintained their 1998 scores. While the percentage of students at or above proficient went from 32 percent in 1998 to 34 percent in 2005; this was not a significant increase." During this same time span, pass rates on the seventh grade WASL reading test rose from 38% to 69%.

Checking back with the US Chamber of Commerce "Leaders and Laggards" report, one notes:



Washington State gets middling marks on the credibility of its student proficiency scores. The grade is based on the difference between the percentage of students identified as proficient in reading and math on 2005 state assessments and the percentage identified as proficient on the NAEP in 2005.



The one burning question in the minds of your readers and newspaper readers throughout the state is: After 14 years of reform, why do we not have an accountability system that works? We suggest it is because WASL has held up the implementation of any real accountability of the system and concentrated for 10 years only on accountability for students.

After 14 years of school reform, we find our state at a place where the State Board of Education is just beginning to discuss what a diploma should mean and how to set up an accountability system for schools and districts.

Governor: "We’re paying for outputs; we’re not paying for inputs anymore."

Throughout the entire WASL section of the interview, we were struck by the blatant political posturing in every comment made by the governor. But, while her continued verbal assault and threats directed at students, parents, teachers, administrators, and local schools in general, may win her the eternal respect of the Washington Roundtable and misinformed editorial boards, it will do nothing to achieve the true educational excellence that was sought by the implementation of HB 1209 school reform or, most importantly, offer improved opportunity to students in greatest need.

An entire generation, one million students, has slipped through the public school system while Olympia experimented and fiddled with accountability commissions and studies over the last 14 years. Fortunately, caring local teachers, principals, superintendents, school boards, and parents have done more than study accountability and have made sure that the majority of these students received what they needed in public schools, just as local adults saw to it that most students in previous generations received the education that was rightfully theirs. However, this does not change the fact that there still exists a gaping achievement gap between students who live in middle and upper income homes served by school districts with ample resources and students who come to school from low income homes or who have special needs, and are served by schools that struggle to find adequate local funding to supplement inadequate state allocations.

Low income, minority, bilingual, and special education students are still struggling in the same ways they were struggling before multi-billion dollar reform began. The only perceivable policy differences are an OSPI-encouraged system that triages low performing students right out of the educational attainment picture and a state accountability system that will deny them a diploma in return for their WASL-intensified struggle.

In order to get "outputs" the living, breathing "inputs" must be supported and provided the federally required Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) and a state required ample public education including all appropriate supplemental services.

Children are not corn chips on a conveyor belt that can be tweaked with a best practice or sprayed with a new improved vegetable oil and sent on their way to be tested by quality control for a seal of approval or a stamp of rejection. Children are young people with a myriad of talents and original thoughts and ideas and flaws and foibles, just like the adults who nurture them and provide them with educational experiences.

Finally, if the intent of your interview of the governor was to enlighten or inform the public, you have failed miserably. Time and space do not permit presentation of all evidence and research that you, the governor, the Washington Roundtable, and the state superintendent refuse to acknowledge or accept. This does not negate the existence of ample evidence which your readers trust you, as editors and reporters, to investigate and present accurately.

Realizing that we are only members of the public and organizers of a nonprofit organization and that we do not command the unquestioning respect given the governor, we would nevertheless be glad to make ourselves available to meet with you to discuss these issues.

Sincerely,


Juanita Doyon, Director, Parent Empowerment Network
Author, Not With Our Kids You Don’t! Ten Strategies to Save Our Schools

Carol Carpenter, Executive Board Member, Parent Empowerment Network
Yakima

Raúl de la Rosa, Consultant, Parent Empowerment Network
Former Section Director of Special Programs, OSPI

cc: Governor Gregoire, Superintendent Soria, Senator Clements, YEA President Vicki Dwight, LULAC, Special Education Coalition, Commission on Hispanic Affairs, WSSDA, WASA, WEA, statewide media, public officials, nonprofit organizations, and concerned citizens


— Parent Empowerment Network
Yakima Herald
2007-05-14


---

INDEX OF OUTRAGES

Pages: 380   
[1] 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>    Last >>