The Washington Assessment of Student Learning - WASL is like a train wreck. There has been no shortage of people--parents, teachers, students, citizens--who have tried to tell legislators and administrators that it is a train wreck, but to no avail. The WASL is flawed on so many levels, each of which could be a blog topic in itself, or even a complete dissertation. Here are just a few problems:
- The WASL is not valid or reliable. Agencies and boards which have claimed that it is valid and reliable are all connected in some way with the assessment.
- The WASL results are not released in time for the scores to be of any help to teachers.
- The WASL results come out in a format that makes it difficult for teachers to figure out what weaknesses to address
- The standards that the WASL is designed to assess have been rated F by the Fordham Foundation.
- The entire curriculum has been sacrificed. It is now only about teaching to the WASL.
- Parents who have viewed their child's completed WASL have seen discrepancies in grading and errors in some items, but they must sign a muzzle-agreement so they can't tell others what they saw.
- The WASL is not a test of right and wrong answers. It is an "assessment" of the student's thinking PROCESS.
- Students are made fearful and anxious, worried they won't know the answers, when they will actually be graded on their thinking PROCESS.
- The WASL is unbelievable expensive. Changing to a simpler right-and-wrong-answer test would not only save millions of dollars, but would also set the curriculum back on track to teach facts and information.
The WASL is based on the wrong standards, it assesses the wrong things, and it is based on the wrong goals. It is a train wreck.
