Schools lose ground while standing still

Students in Washington are doing about the same as they did a year ago on statewide assessment tests.

That’s not good enough for the federal government which added more schools from this state onto its list of those needing to show improvement.

State schools chief Randy Dorn expressed his displeasure today when he released a batch of WASL results.

“Our state testing scores are flat, yet the federal system shows an additional 500 schools are failing,” Dorn said in a press release. “What is failing is No Child Left Behind. The law is completely unfair. While we know there is certainly room for improvement in our schools, it’s a statistical guarantee in this law that all of our schools will soon be in federal improvement status. That’s unrealistic.”

Here’s the full release with links to the test scores.

Here’s our initial coverage.