In an increasingly competitive world, the stakes continue to rise for high school students as they prepare for college or an immediate place in the workforce.
So it was a cold wake-up call when scores from this year’s Washington Assessment of Student Learning, released last week, showed a drop in scores among 10th-graders in reading and math, largely because they didn’t seem to care.
The WASL is part of the state’s ongoing effort to make a public-school education more useful and relevant. Intended to measure progress in basic skills and the state’s toughened learning standards, it is taken each spring by fourth-, seventh- and 10th-graders. Up to this year, each grade level had been showing steady improvement. The drop in 10th-grade scores, however — explained in part because many students left questions blank or provided answers that weren’t on-point — shows that more must be done to make students take the test seriously.
Starting as soon as 2008, high-school students will have to pass the WASL in order to graduate. This year’s seventh-graders will be the first to face the new requirement, but steps should be taken now to ensure that apathy doesn’t undermine student success on this important test.
Worthy suggestions are being offered by the Washington Roundtable, a corporate-backed, public-policy organization that supports education reform. The group wants state universities to consider making WASL scores part of their admissions criteria, an idea that would better align the universities with the education-reform effort launched in this state some 10 years ago.
The Washington Roundtable and the Partnership for Learning, another business group, also want employers to consider the WASL scores of young job applicants, a common-sense idea sure to get teenagers’ attention.
When today’s seventh-graders take the 10th-grade WASL, graduation will be the major incentive for taking the test seriously. In the meantime, plenty of discussion remains about how to deal with students who fail the test, a question that can be solved. In any case, the bar of student achievement must continue being raised if our children are to reach their potential.
Almost 20 years ago, the famous federal report "A Nation at Risk" served as a national wake-up call for education. Our state responded with a strong education-reform effort that includes high standards as a cornerstone and the WASL as the tool to measure how we’re doing. We all must take it seriously if we expect our children to do so.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
