Most students at Jackson High School will not be held back from a diploma this spring because they failed to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL.
Results from the test, taken in spring 2007, were released last week.
This year’s seniors are the first class that must pass the 10th-grade reading and writing exams to graduate.
At Jackson, 1,173 of the school’s roughly 1600 students have passed both the reading and writing sections of the test.
Statewide, 83.6 percent of the class of 2008 has passed both exams. The passing rate among seniors in math, which was delayed as a graduation requirement until 2013, is 63 percent.
Seniors who haven’t passed the reading and writing sections of the test can turn in a “collection of evidence” as an alternate assessment. The evidence is pieces of work that are similar to what the WASL tests.
At Jackson, scores were above the state average. Sixty-six percent of Jackson 10th graders passed the math portion of the test, compared to the 50.2 percent of 10th graders who passed math on average across the state.
At Jackson, 91.9 percent of students passed reading and 93.5 percent passed writing.
On average in the state, 80.6 percent of 10th grade students passed reading and 83.6 percent passed writing.
Compared to 2005-06 scores, the percent of 10th graders who passed math jumped by almost 10 percent, reading jumped by about 3 percent, and writing jumped by about 5 percent of students passing.
Jackson principal Terry Cheshire could not be reached to comment on the scores.
Detailed statewide WASL 2006-07 score results and individual school and district results are at: http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/
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