Although I never agree with the education union on anything, I will make an exception for its opposition to the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. The current flap over the test hits several hot buttons for this former teacher.
It tries to cover too much time and material. Facing the need to teach and learn what should have been mastered over months and years in the past, both students and teachers are thrown into a panic. Obviously the panic is over the challenge of correcting by one test decades of inane educational philosophy and inept teacher preparation, all bathed in a hitherto impenetrable aura of unionized self-esteem.
Although the teachers assured us loudly and repeatedly that they would never “teach to the test,” they have reached for every available means to get the scores up, even using commercially produced helps once called “crib sheets.” In a more morally sensitive era this was called cheating and could get you expelled from school. If this isn’t teaching to the test, what is?
How can this kind of “teaching” be called an education, unless you design a test that is impossibly long and then spend a curriculum-like amount of time teaching it?
We may have to bag the WASL and its versions in other states, writing off another generation of ineptly taught children while we turn major attention to the genuine improvement of teacher education. This suggestion will outrage educators and their sycophants bedazzled by the nebulosities of “No Child Left Behind.” However, an honest look at the product over several decades forces the conclusion that indeed, many children have been left behind with their teachers, and today’s terrified, truncated approach will not catch up.
FRANK HUTCHINS
Mountlake Terrace
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