Randy Dorn was never a member of Mothers Against the WASL

Jerry Cornfield is confused.

Randy Dorn pledged to toss out the WASL if elected to run Washington's public schools.

He won the job of superintendent of public instruction. He's ready to make good on his promise.

Wednesday he'll reveal details of an extreme makeover of the exam, beginning with a new name because, as he says, "WASL" is kryptonite.

Questions will be fewer in number, shorter in length and able to be answered and scored on a computer in his blueprint.

His goal is to have students spend less time taking it, teachers spend less time giving it and the state spend less money on it....

Which raises the political question: If it looks like the WASL, sounds like the WASL, reads like the WASL and counts like the WASL, isn't it the WASL?

How about we head over to Randy Dorn's campaign website, then, to see what Dorn actually promised.

We don't need to spend years figuring this out. Drawing on successful tests developed in other states, in my first year in office I will work with the state school board to replace the WASL with a testing system that is diagnostic, tied to technology, more fair, more understandable, and which takes less time so that testing doesn't dominate curriculum and the school calendar. We will then phase this new test in so there is no gap in accountability for current students.

It seems that Mr. Cornfield has projected certain anti-WASL sentiments on to Mr. Dorn. To be fair, though, I know a lot of people who knowingly glossed over Dorn's make-the-WASL-smarter stance, voting for anybody but Bergeson.

close a few loopholes and balance the budget?

$53 billion in tax loopholes offer a tantalizing option for Governor Gregoire: raising taxes without technically raising taxes.

If state lawmakers wanted to raise money by closing tax exemptions, there are 567 to choose from. Taken together, the tax breaks cut $53 billion in potential revenues that the state might have received and $45 million more to local governments.

Of those exemptions, 147 of have been added to the tax rolls since the 2001 legislative session.

Of the grand total, 158 were exemptions to the retail sales and use taxes. These include exemptions on sales of food, medicines and the like, which are worth $30 billion in the 2007-09 budget cycle, according to the Department of Revenue's Tax Exemptions 2008 guide. One hundred and three others are property-tax exemptions worth $9 billion.

Of course, every loophole has a lobbyist, meaning that the legislature, until now, has closed hardly any of 'em.

Most tax-repeal recommendations from 2007 were ignored by the Legislature. Those included elimination of a $2 million break for horse racing and $2 million for club membership dues and fees. Also ignored was a recommendation to re-examine a $47 million break given to nonprofit hospitals and $17 million to nonsectarian organizations.

Lawmakers did manage to get rid of one exemption in 2007. That was a temporary tax break for beef producers enacted after the mad-cow disease scare a few years ago, and lawmakers did not extend its life.

Anyhow, The Olympian predicts a shocking budget recommendation from the Governor to match this week's Arctic Blast.

She is scheduled to announce a deep-cutting budget proposal Thursday that could lop $1 billion from K-12 schools, cut jobs or reduce the hours for many of Washington's 110,000 state employees, and shear away big parts of the social safety net.

Gregoire swore off tax increases while on the campaign trail this year, and the recently re-elected Democrat has shown no sign of relenting on that point — even with a budget shortfall she hints could hit $6 billion for the 2009-11 cycle. Even she says it will be "ugly" and that she will hate it.

How long until we're on a four-day school week?

Randy Dorn defeats Bergeson

The Seattle Times--and Bergeson's camp--think it's too close to call.

In the race for the state schools chief, Terry Bergeson was disappointed to be trailing challenger Randy Dorn but was not ready to give up.

Given the number of ballots yet to be counted, "Friday is about the earliest we could make a reasonable decision," said Alex Hays, her campaign consultant.

I'm going out on a thick mathematical limb to say that Randy Dorn will be your next Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Here's why.

The counties where Bergeson holds a lead have about 135,000 outstanding votes. Bergeson, overall, trails Dorn by about 35,000. So, she'd either have to win a ridiculously high majority in the counties she's already winning (over 66%) and hold steady elsewhere, or win a solid majority in those counties, and majorly turn around the trends in all the others. That would include King, which is slightly Dornish at 50.4% (293,000 votes left), and Snohomish, which is strong for Dorn at 54.5% (with 100,000 votes left). Snohomish alone wipes out any potential advantage from the smaller counties where Bergeson leads.

Looking at the overall picture, she needs about 53% of the remaining ballots--706,000 in all--to win, and barely. It's just not going to happen.

Mark my words: Dorn is it.

Update 5:30 Wouldn't you know it, Bergeson has conceded a day earlier than her staff predicted. Could it have been due to the astute mathematical analysis found on this blog?

No.

Anyhow, adios, WASL. What will replace thee?

Washington state primary predictions

1. For Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn will outpoll Terry Bergeson.
2. David Blomstrom, despite finishing fifth, will live to run another day.
3. Turnout will be lower than expected.
4. For Governor, Dino Rossi will trail Chris Gregoire, 47-49 (the remaining 4% split among the others).
5. For Congress, Darcy Burner will outpoll Dave Reichert.
6. No one on either of these lists will win.
7. Washington state's servers will crash as the punditocrats hit "refresh" on their election results screens, over and over until their fingers bleed, while the rest of the world watches Olympic beach volleyball.
8. Democracy will survive another primary.

Bergeson fails the WASL

Actually, not really. Well, sort of.

Out of three questions given to Bergeson, the answer sheet posted on The Stranger showed that she didn’t answer any of the three questions correctly....

Bergeson's campaign manager told KIRO 7 that The Stranger surprised Bergeson with the questions, which she had trouble seeing, because she didn't have her glasses with her.

That is... a lame excuse.

WASL passage rate tops 90%

91.4% of the class of 2008 can sleep well tonight, glowing in the light of the WASL. (Well, at least since the math portion was dropped.)

I'm glad--well, not glad, but satisfied--to see KOMO getting the other, often unmentioned part of the story: that 15,000 students have already dropped out. That's about 18% of the original class of 2008, number about 82,000 in all.

If a few more drop because they can't get credits, and a few more because the WASL stumps 'em, then we'll be at near the historically high dropout rate. This, to me, is the most important issue we face in secondary education, WASL or no. I'm somewhat optimistic that the State Board of Education is serious about tackling it, with their revision of graduation requirements and talk of pathways, but... we'll see.

Oh, and: I totally called it.

it was Teacher Appreciation Week. were you appreciated?

Darren Paquin was.

Angie Collins has become a teacher’s pet, though it may have taken 22 years and a kidney.

Collins, 40, donated her kidney this week to her former Elwood Community High School English teacher Darren Paquin.

I got a free doughnut. It was more than enough.

time to throw concrete math instruction out the window?

This... could hurt.

In the first experiment, involving 80 students, some participants were given one concrete example before testing on the children’s game, while some were given two or three examples. One group only learned the generic symbols.

When tested on the children’s game, the group that learned the generic symbols got nearly 80 percent of the questions right. Those who learned one, two or even three concrete examples did no better than chance in selecting the right answers.

“They were just guessing,” Kaminski said.

In a second experiment, the researchers gave 20 participants two concrete examples and explained how they were alike. Surprisingly, this still did not help students apply the concept any better and they still did no better than chance when tested later about the game.

In a third experiment, the researchers presented 20 students with two concrete examples and then asked them to compare the two examples and write down any similarities they saw. After this experiment, about 44 percent of the students performed well on the test concerning the children’s game, while the remainder still did not perform better than chance.

This suggests that only some students, not all, benefit from direct comparison of learned concrete examples.

Finally, in a fourth experiment involving 40 students, some learned the concrete example first followed by the generic symbols, while others learned only the generic symbols. The thought here was that the concrete example would engage the students in the learning process while the generic symbols would promote transfer of that knowledge.

But even in this experiment, students who learned only the generic symbols performed better on subsequent testing than those who learned the concept using the concrete example and then the generic symbols.

The authors said that students seem to learn concepts quickly when they are presented with familiar real objects such as marbles or containers of liquid, and so it is easy to see why many advocate this approach. “But it turns out there is no true insight there. They can’t move beyond these real objects to apply that knowledge,” said Sloutsky.

Compare that with, say, the recent math-athon in the North Thurston district.

Pre-calculus students at North Thurston High School will show display boards of photographs of everyday objects that are examples of conics — circles, parabolas, ellipses and hyperboles.

“I just wanted them to see real math in the real world,” said their teacher, Julie Cassidy.

Boards showed photographs of nail polish bottles, mustard containers, bicycle racks, basketballs, garden hoses, shoe soles and more.

“I really liked it because it kind of gives you a more hands-on idea of math. I’m the type of person who likes to get out and experience in the world. I can’t sit at a desk and remember it,” said junior Raewyn Heim, 17.

Obviously, further studies are needed to see if Heim has it right. It could be that the hands-on aspect provides greater motivation for learners who aren't already college undergrads, the subjects of the OSU experiment. Also, if Piagetian principles are at play, the older students might just be more facile in the realm of abstraction. Still, as an English teacher, I have to go with this quote by one of the experimenters: "Story problems could be an incredible instrument for testing what was learned. But they are bad instruments for teaching."

Now you have a scientific reason to hate story problems.

pissed pedagogue won't WASL

Seattle teacher Carl Chew refused to administer the sixth-grade WASL to his students, taking a two week unpaid vacation as a consequence.

Carl Chew, 60, who teaches science, wanted to take a stand against a test he considers harmful to students, teachers, schools and families.

"I did it because I think it's bad for kids," he said.

He said he knew he would face consequences, and might even be fired.

"When you do an act of civil disobedience, you gracefully accept what happens to you," he said.

Before the WASL started at Eckstein last week, Chew said he told Eckstein administrators that he would not give the exam. He said they tried to talk him out of it.

Or into it, really.

I'm surprised he wasn't fired straight up for insubordination. He must have a pretty good record--or a pretty forgiving administration. At the very least, he's sincere, knowing full well what his mini-rebellion would entail.

Click through and read the whole thing.

no random drug searches for Washington schools

I'm quite pleased that our state's Supreme Court stood up to the feds and upheld our own Constitution, which more strictly safeguards our right to privacy.

The decision involved athletes who sued the Wahkiakum School District in 1999 after the district began requiring students to undergo urine tests if they wanted to participate in sports. If the tests indicated drug or alcohol use, the student was suspended from sports but wasn't reported to police.

At the time, officials in the Southwest Washington school district felt there was a real problem with student drug use, including use among athletes. Public surveys named youth substance abuse as the No. 1 problem there. That's not enough to allow drug testing of a student when there's no reason to suspect he or she is using drugs, the court ruled unanimously.

"The justices concluded, as we had contended, that it violates the state Constitution to require a student to give their urine without any reason to believe they've done anything wrong," said Doug Honig, a spokesman for the ACLU of Washington, which represented the students and their parents.

Students don't deserve random drug testing, especially not the students who are least likely to abuse drugs. Every now and then, law and common sense collide. This is one of those rare times.

show me the WASL

This parent's eye view of the WASL is worth reading for this fact alone:

Out of a total of 1.5 million WASL test booklets marked in 2007 by Washington students in grades 3 through 12, tests from just 746 students have been shown to parents.

That's because receiving the booklet is at the parent's insistence. It ought to be a required mailing by the state, at least to every student who hasn't met standard, both to parents and teachers. The limited data currently available--scores broken down into categories, with no detailed interpretation--are as helpful as a personals ad.

If the WASL survives the current legislative session, which is likely, given a threatened Gregoire veto to any attempt to quash it, we should still push for reform in the way the middle-level tests are structured, delivered, scored, and shared. Otherwise, they're meaningless as an individual assessment.

WASL retakes a smashing failure

Ouch. Sure, 657 students are closer to graduating, having passed the August retake in reading, writing, or both.

August retakes of the high school Washington Assessment of Student Learning pushed 657 seniors closer to graduation, with 84.5 percent of the more than 73,000 students in the class of 2008 now meeting standards in reading and writing.

But 8,239 tested, including roughly 7,000 are seniors, which makes the retake success rate less than 10%. No matter what, over 11,000 seniors aren't on track to matriculate, if I'm correctly reading the numbers.

And I say "if." I didn't have to pass the Math WASL, and neither did you.


Update: Somehow, the P-I manages to spin this as good news. Combined with the low number of students signing up for the alternate portfolio assessment, I can't see it as anything but disaster.

changes aplenty in math and grad requirements

Via KOMO, word that the state is about ready to lift the lid off new math GLE-EALR-things, including the death of the dreaded spiral:

Seeley wouldn't share many specifics about the new learning requirements before the draft is released on Tuesday, but she did offer some examples about the way the teaching of math is evolving in Washington and around the nation.

The current math learning standards offer a spiral of learning - a number of concepts are taught over a number of years with more depth added over time. The new standards will shorten the length of time students are given to master a concept like fractions, but during the years in which fractions are a major emphasis, teachers will spend more time and make more of an effort to ensure that every child understands the concept thoroughly, Seeley said.

"We're really trying to get past the spiral, so students don't get stuck spinning around," she said.

For the anti-WASL hopeful, dash yours: the WASL's still part of the program. It'll be "revised" by 2013, when it again comes perilously close to a bona fide graduation requirement before inevitable and inexorable delays. Whoops, cynicism creeping through.

Meanwhile, on the high school front:

Tuesday, State Board of Education members will be in Seattle to discuss raising the minimum number and types of classes students need to graduate from high school, and perhaps changing other state graduation requirements, such as the in-depth "culminating" project.

The board members aren't looking at removing the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) as one of the graduation requirements — that's something they support, said Edie Harding, the board's executive director.

They are considering adding to the list of courses students must take — perhaps matching what most four-year public colleges and universities expect of their applicants. And they're discussing whether to add a number of "lifelong learning skills" that students would have to demonstrate, such as leadership, civic responsibility and teamwork.

They forgot to name test-taking, but it's in there, promise.

a Web 2.0 pandemic in the making

Ryan wrote about a rising fever of Web 2.0 in education. Now the Seattle Times has caught the bug with its Digital Democracy project:

We asked Seattle public school students to submit, on video, the questions they think are most important to the district's future. We selected five of those questions, and asked each Seattle School board candidate to respond in kind. Now it's your turn to watch the results. Click play on the question to hear what the student asked. Listen to the answers from each candidate by doing the same.

A sample clip from candidate Harium Martin-Morris is provided below. Kudos to the Times and the candidates for reaching out to voters.

Laura Jones, teacher of the year

I don't know about you, but it seems like nearly everything I've been reading about teachers and education in the past few weeks has been negative. Political controversies, funding problems, teacher-predators, school violence...

Some good news, then: a Pasco teacher has been named this year's best in the state.

Laura Jones was among nine finalists for the award, announced at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The winner represents Washington in the national Teacher of the Year competition....

Jones, 38, who used to work in marketing and public relations, is in her 12th year of teaching. At Pasco, she teaches marketing and specialty-foods marketing, runs the Deca chapter and helps students run the school store. She earned her teaching certification from Central Washington University and her master's degree in education from Heritage University.

Jones said she realized teaching was a calling while she was in her previous job. There, she said, she enjoyed training people and working with interns.

Of her career at Pasco, she said, "I have the most rewarding job in the world, and my students just make my day, every day."

It's a sentiment I'm sure most teachers share. Congratulations to Jones, and to the eight finalists who have been honored by the state.

Washington's online schools: failing students?

I wonder if anyone out there has access to the full Washington State Business Journal article that starts thusly:

Washington's two statewide online schools are performing below state averages, according to the latest Washington Assessment of Student Learning results.

In 15 out of 20 grade levels and subjects tested, the online schools had a lower pass rate than schools with regular classrooms.

In some cases, the online pass rate was nearly 20 percentage points below that of traditional schools. In eighth grade science, 26.4 percent of online-school test-takers met standards, compared with 45.6 percent statewide.

Students in online schools also skipped the test at a much higher rate than in the state overall. In the case of online 10th graders, fewer than half took the WASL.

Assuming the stats are correct, we can guess at some potential reasons online students might be lagging, WASL-wise, ranging from least to most cynical.

1. The sample size is too small for meaningful comparison, since so many digital students didn't take the WASL.

2. Online instruction is subpar to classroom instruction, for a plethora of reasons.

3. The students who take online courses are largely a disaffected group shunted or kicked out of regular classrooms. Their WASL failure was already a given.

I hope it's #1, or something like it. Online instruction is only going to grow in popularity--and if the results are poor, students will lose out in the process.

Shoreline teacher strike: just the quotes

Via the Times article. The strike begins--and ends--tomorrow. But the hurt will last until summer, at least.

"The reputation of the district is in jeopardy with the actions of the association. There wasn't a town here originally, there was a school district, and people moved here to be a part of that."

--Sue Walker, Superintendent


"[Ben] lost it. He said, 'Why me? Why me? Why did they pick me?' The right that we have to a good education, by this decision by the administration, has been hindered."

--Sharon Reijonen, parent


"We're trying to use our resources more effectively than we have in the past."

--Dan Mann, School Board member


"Before we do something this instructionally damaging, we believe we should have exhausted all possible avenues for revenue generation and for cost reduction."

--Elizabeth Beck, Shoreline EA co-president


"This is the first time in my teaching career I have ever been embarrassed to be in this district. They're sucking the soul out of Shoreline."

--Kaydee McGillivray, longtime elementary teacher


"There's definitely a sense that in this whole struggle to bring the financial picture back into line, there's been a certain callousness and overlooking what's happening in the classroom. It's past the eleventh hour, it's past the twelfth hour. It's the third week of school."

--Ed Coleman, parent


"I don't think the strike is going to change what's going on, and I think it sends the wrong message to the community. Frustration and disappointment are my primary emotions at this point."

--Mike Jacobs, Board president

The administration could at least make some sort of conciliatory gesture: move into tents to save on building costs, and fight the budget battle as if it's a real war. We're all in this together, right?

Shoreline teachers strike to protest class sizes

Taking Thursday off, with a vote of no confidence for the Supe. From a Seattle Times update:

Elizabeth Beck, union co-president, said the strike vote was in response to a move by the district to shuffle elementary-school students between classes, resulting in some class sizes as large as 28. The no-confidence vote was the first in Shoreline in at least a decade, she said.

On the district Web site, Walker wrote that the district had added seven elementary teaching positions on Sept. 13 to deal with too-large classes in nearly half of the district's elementary classrooms. Those new teachers are to shuttle among overloaded classrooms, providing extra help during portions of the school day.

The one-day strike adds tension to the already strained relations between teachers and administrators in the 9,000-student district. A strike was averted before school started, but Beck said Walker and her staff are already violating terms of the new contract.

are defibrillators worth the cost?

Our school has one: it's kept at the office, within sprinting range of most of the campus. But are automatic external defibrillators, which can cost thousands in implementation and training, worth the investment? An area study says "maybe."

A nationwide push to put portable defibrillators in every school, a response to several high-profile student deaths, may not be worth the cost, a new study concludes.

The survey of emergency response to schools in the Seattle area over 16 years found that students suffered cardiac arrests only 12 times and a third of these children had known heart problems.

Most of the cardiac arrests at schools between 1990 to 2005 involved adults - teachers, volunteers or people just walking on school property. And they occurred much more often in high schools and middle schools than elementary schools.

"I certainly have no objection to AEDs (automated external defibrillators)," said one of the researchers, Dr. Tom Rea, of the University of Washington's Harborview Medical Center. He's also medical director for King County Medic One, the county's emergency medical service.

But not every school has the money for a defibrillator, which each cost an average of $1,000 to $3,000, not including the cost to train school staff, he said. They decided to do the study after several states mandated the purchase of defibrillators for schools and others were considering similar measures, he said.

It sounds like mandatory CPR training might be a better investment--especially since CPR techniques need to be changed to reflect current research.

Best line of the article comes near the end: "According to the study, schools are one of the best places for adults to suffer cardiac arrest."

funding lawsuit moves forward

The lawsuit, which I mentioned earlier this week, is going to trial.

A King County Superior Court judge on Friday declined to rule on the merits of a lawsuit calling for an overhaul of the way the state pays for education, sending the matter toward a trial next June.

Judge Paris K. Kallas said too many facts were in dispute for her to grant a motion for summary judgment brought by a coalition of teachers, parents, community groups and school districts. The coalition wants to require the state to calculate exactly how much it costs to provide an adequate education for all pupils, then figure out a way to pay for it.

It's not the speedy outcome the plaintiffs were hoping for, but it'll guarantee a spate of publicity and, this blogger hopes, a well-reasoned outcome.