More math can help with WASL

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, August 5, 2006

The gap isn’t surprising, but it is telling.

High school sophomores a year ahead in math fare far better on a high-stakes state math exam than their counterparts who are at or below grade level, according to reports from local school districts.

In the Edmonds School District, 87 percent of sophomores enrolled in third-year high school math classes have passed the Washington Assessment of Student Learning math exam over the past three years.

By comparison, just 45 percent of sophomores who were at grade level passed the math exam and only 8 percent of students a year or more behind passed the test.

Math has been the Achilles heal for sophomores taking the WASL. While the passing rate in reading and writing hovers around 80 percent statewide, about half of all sophomores pass the math test.

Across Snohomish County, about 900 local teenagers are taking special classes this summer after failing portions of the WASL last spring. More than three-quarters of them are preparing for the math test.

Education leaders say the trend of students taking third-year math and doing well on the WASL can be interpreted a number of ways.

They say it should encourage parents to monitor what math classes their children are taking well before high school.

And, they say, it should encourage students who were at grade level their sophomore year but narrowly missed passing the WASL’s math section.

If they take third-year math their junior year, odds are they will do well on a retake, said Nancy Katims, the Edmonds district’s director of assessment, research and evaluation.

About one quarter of the Edmonds students were in an above-grade-level math class. The district goal is to increase that percentage dramatically in the years ahead.

Other school districts report a similar trend of students in high-level math classes passing the WASL.

The Marysville School District recently found 40 percent of juniors quit math after the 10th grade. Of those, nearly two-thirds failed the math WASL. The group studied was part of the Class of 2007, the last class that didn’t need to pass the WASL to graduate.

The Marysville study also found that 73 percent of students who were in a below-grade-level math class failed the WASL while 96 percent above grade level passed. Sixty-two percent who were in a grade level math class passed.

Allen Sharples, curriculum director for the Lakewood School District, said he expects the percentage of sophomores passing the WASL math exam to increase in the years ahead, particularly among those who are on grade level.

Schools must tweak their curriculum to get more students to reach the state math standards tested on the WASL, he said.

“I think it’s the current way of doing math that is the problem, not the standards,” he said.