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WASL 2.0

News   August 14, 2009 at 10:14 am SoulNerd

Teachers, students and parents who rejoiced at the death of the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) with the election of the state’s new Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn, should probably stop dancing their graveside jig, as the WASL 2.0 is about to be raised from the ashes of its ancestor.

Superintendent Dorn calls the two new, unnamed tests “better” than the WASL, while others call it the WASL, just broken into two shorter tests.

Either way, educators can start teaching to this test when school starts in the fall.


  • seabos84

    EVERYONE teaches to the test – well, except at rich kid schools like Hampshire College, where people can major in dreadlocks and toenail painting cuz … mummy and daddy and granny and aunty will make sure that you’ll never be burdened with mundane, uncreative, boring things like … paying bills so you aren’t living in the street.

    LIFE is a test. Plant the corn, rice or wheat on time, or starve. Harvest on time, or starve. Fix your roof or freeze to death.

    sheesh. grow up.

    rmm.

  • seabos84

    EVERYONE teaches to the test – well, except at rich kid schools like Hampshire College, where people can major in dreadlocks and toenail painting cuz … mummy and daddy and granny and aunty will make sure that you’ll never be burdened with mundane, uncreative, boring things like … paying bills so you aren’t living in the street.

    LIFE is a test. Plant the corn, rice or wheat on time, or starve. Harvest on time, or starve. Fix your roof or freeze to death.

    sheesh. grow up.

    rmm.

  • Ian

    Until you calculate performance into teacher salary and retention I frankly don’t have a better alternative. At least this makes all teachers teach something–it sucks for talented teachers who have creative ideas though.

    Can we put money into recruitment and retention instead of standardized tests for 5-10 years and see what we come out with?

  • Ian

    Until you calculate performance into teacher salary and retention I frankly don’t have a better alternative. At least this makes all teachers teach something–it sucks for talented teachers who have creative ideas though.

    Can we put money into recruitment and retention instead of standardized tests for 5-10 years and see what we come out with?

  • joshuadf

    There is a little good news in there: “testing time will roughly be cut in half.” seabos84, imagine if you had to spend weeks filling out job assessment paperwork for the state. Is that real life?

  • joshuadf

    There is a little good news in there: “testing time will roughly be cut in half.” seabos84, imagine if you had to spend weeks filling out job assessment paperwork for the state. Is that real life?

  • http://www.mas4schools.com/ Charlie Mas

    You don’t make things bigger by measuring them. We can get value from the WASL or the WASL 2.0 only if the classroom instruction changes as a result of information gathered from the test.

    If the test shows that a lot of students are not learning something – such as the distributive property or the meaning of metaphors – then we need to change the way we teach those things.

    If the test shows that individual students are working below grade level, then we need to get those students the support they need to accelerate their education and bring them up to grade level.

    Right now we’re not doing either of these things, so we’re not getting any value from any of these tests. And we won’t get any value from these tests or any others until we start doing these things.

  • http://www.mas4schools.com Charlie Mas

    You don’t make things bigger by measuring them. We can get value from the WASL or the WASL 2.0 only if the classroom instruction changes as a result of information gathered from the test.

    If the test shows that a lot of students are not learning something – such as the distributive property or the meaning of metaphors – then we need to change the way we teach those things.

    If the test shows that individual students are working below grade level, then we need to get those students the support they need to accelerate their education and bring them up to grade level.

    Right now we’re not doing either of these things, so we’re not getting any value from any of these tests. And we won’t get any value from these tests or any others until we start doing these things.

  • http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/ Charlie Mas

    A couple of recent stories by SoulNerd have been discussed on the Seattle Public Schools community blog at http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com.

    Just thought you’d like to know.

  • http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com Charlie Mas

    A couple of recent stories by SoulNerd have been discussed on the Seattle Public Schools community blog at http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com.

    Just thought you’d like to know.

  • westello

    The new “WASL” will be done on-line allowing teachers, students and parents much faster results. This, in turn, should lead to teachers being able to pinpoint areas of weakness for the student (and if all students are weak in the same area, tell the teacher that he/she needs to change their teaching). Parents will be able to support the needed work at home. It costs less to the taxpayer (for more information more quickly).

    Will it be perfect from the get-go? No but it’ll be better than the two-week slog that is the WASL today that disrupts the entire school (especially in middle and high school).

  • westello

    The new “WASL” will be done on-line allowing teachers, students and parents much faster results. This, in turn, should lead to teachers being able to pinpoint areas of weakness for the student (and if all students are weak in the same area, tell the teacher that he/she needs to change their teaching). Parents will be able to support the needed work at home. It costs less to the taxpayer (for more information more quickly).

    Will it be perfect from the get-go? No but it’ll be better than the two-week slog that is the WASL today that disrupts the entire school (especially in middle and high school).

  • Seattle parent

    Elementary kids will now be tested 4 times per year – the “new” WASL taken at the very end of the year and the MAP test (an adaptive computer based test) taken in the Fall, Winter and Spring. The “new” WASL still cannot be used by current teachers to help their students as it’s an end of the year test. The MAP test offers the promise of readily available results for the parents and current year teachers. Students performance/gains over the course of the year can be tracked. Will MAP results be used for teacher performance pay reasons?

  • Seattle parent

    Elementary kids will now be tested 4 times per year – the “new” WASL taken at the very end of the year and the MAP test (an adaptive computer based test) taken in the Fall, Winter and Spring. The “new” WASL still cannot be used by current teachers to help their students as it’s an end of the year test. The MAP test offers the promise of readily available results for the parents and current year teachers. Students performance/gains over the course of the year can be tracked. Will MAP results be used for teacher performance pay reasons?