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Test Anxiety: Even in its last days, the WASL stokes the flames of controversy

Read clear to the end. Juanita Doyon makes the key point here. Kudos to teacher Jim Harrison.

I am in contact with the father of the 5th grader who defecated on himself when his request to go to the lavatory was denied during testing. Can you imagine what such an incident would do to a fifth grader?

Kudos to the teachers who refused to administer the test to special ed students. We should have more teachers who "Just say no."

Kudos to the reporter for such a thorough survey of the ill effects of the WASL.

Daniel Walters

The Washington Assessment of Student Learning is dead. Washington state schools chief Randy Dorn, as per campaign promise, killed it.

But father Hal Chapman and sixth-grade Balboa Elementary teacher Jim Harrison are still angry. They're angry about an incident during the final test.

Chapman and Harrison say Balboa Principal Pat Lynass, after flipping through already-completed WASL tests, changed the proctor schedule in order to observe students who weren't taking the test seriously. One of those students was Chapman's daughter, Madison.

"I just doodled and just drew rainbows and stuff," Madison says.

Lynass noticed. Chapman says Lynass proceeded to "scold and badger" (the district says she "encouraged") Madison to complete the test.

The principal told Madison that if she wanted to be able to take higher-level math in middle school, she should do well on the WASL test. (The district calls that statement accurate; Harrison calls it a "bald-faced lie.")

Madison erupted in tears. When she went to the bathroom, Chapman says, Lynass continued to badger her.

From then on, Madison, afraid of seeing the principal, ate lunch in Harrison's room instead of the cafeteria. Her father was furious. He met with district officials. He contacted the media in Seattle and in Spokane. He filed a bullying and harassment complaint against Lynass.

Harrison was also upset over WASL rules being broken. A proctor telling a student to complete the test may seem like no big deal, but the WASL has very strict rules. Among them: "Specific feedback must not be given to individual students about completing specific questions."

The school district agrees with Harrison that talking to students during the test was a violation. Lynass won't again. And from now on, the district says, if she looks through test booklets, another staff member will be present. In May, the district sent the investigation results to the state superintendent's office.

"We feel badly that the student cried, as does the principal who apologized to the student for upsetting her, but we do not believe anything was done to 'artificially alter a student's test scores,'" Spokane school district spokeswoman Terren Roloff writes.

Chapman and Harrison aren't satisfied. "It was a violation," Harrison says. "I can't tell the policeman, you know, I was doing 70 miles an hour and I won't do it again."

The district firmly denies it's playing favorites. "These people have made it a much bigger deal than it is," Roloff says. "[The principal] violated protocol. This is not earth-shattering."

Harrison, a teacher for more than 40 years, has never been a big fan of the WASL. "For the kids at the bottom to be told every year-- year after year-- that you're a failure, a failure, a failure" is awful, says Harrison.

In 2008, 20 students in the district opted out of the WASL. Fourteen came from Harrison's class. When students opt out of the WASL, they still get a zero. That zero still shows up on the school's report card, and the district's, marring their scores.

Through the No Child Left Behind Act, a school has to make "adequate yearly progress," or AYP. More students have to pass their state standardized test each year until none are, well, left behind. If a Title 1 school doesn't show enough progress, it faces sanctions.

Every year since at least 2002, Balboa has made AYP. But the district, for the last two years, hasn't met the AYP reading standard at the elementary level. That pressure, Chapman says, was the source of the problem.

"Ms. Lynass told me that her school district [has to meet] AYP, that she needed to get the test scores up. That's why she talked to my daughter during testing," Chapman says.

Statewide, bigger controversies have arisen. On the same day as the Balboa incident, a sixth-grade student in Kennewick, Wash., "uncontrollably defecated all over himself" after his pleas to use the bathroom during the WASL test were denied, his father writes in an e-mail. In 2005, a principal in Aberdeen suspended a fourth-grader for refusing to answer a WASL question. In 2009, two Seattle teachers were suspended after they, at the parents' requests, refused to administer a standardized test to six special education students.

But while the WASL is dead, standardized testing isn't. Juanita Doyon, director of the anti-WASL Parent Empowerment Network, says, "If all you change is the test, but you don't change the culture of high-stakes, then nothing has been accomplished by changing the test."

— Daniel Walters
Pacific Northwest Islander
2009-07-16
http://www.inlander.com/content/newscommentary_balboa_principal_pat_lynass_and_last_days_wasl_test Test Anxiety

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