UW educators evaluate standardized tests

Last week, local teacher Carl Chew began his two weeks on unpaid leave for refusing to administer the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) to his students at Eckstein Middle School.

The 60-year-old sixth grade science teacher said that every year he tells himself he’s not going to give his students the test ­— and this year, he took a stand.

“I did it because I think it’s bad for kids,” Chew told The Seattle Times.

The teacher’s action has inspired a variety of opinions at the UW, where education is an inherent interest.

“I admire him (Chew) tremendously,” said Christine Stickler, director of the Pipeline Project, a K-12 outreach program that connects UW undergraduates with local schools. “It’s an amazingly brave thing to do.”

Like Chew, Stickler believes there are better ways of assessing student learning.

For Catherine Taylor, an associate professor of educational psychology who is currently working on education proposals for the state legislature, the WASL is “perfectly acceptable.”

“It’s not perfect, but it’s better than most,” she said. “I think we have a really good test. To me, of the options we have, I wouldn’t go back.”

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, all U.S. public schools must have some standardized form of assessing students. Each state has a different test, which doesn’t make sense to people who expect all students to be held to the same standards.

Some states lower the bar on exams to allow more students to pass, Stickler said.

The WASL is one of the most rigorous exams, and in a Princeton Review assessment of state tests it earned an “A” grade, Taylor said.

The math and reading sections of the WASL are taken once a year by students in third through eighth grades, as well as 10th grade. Writing is taken by fourth-, seventh- and 10th-graders, while fifth-, eighth- and 10th-graders take the science test. Before the test was created in the 1990s, Washington standardized tests had only multiple-choice questions. The exam now has open-ended questions that allow students to explain their answers, which minorities are more likely to succeed in than multiple-choice, Taylor said.

“The question is if these tests are less or more fair than the ones we’ve had before,” Taylor said.

Native Spanish speakers often have trouble explaining their answers on the exam, Stickler said.

Some worry that teachers feel obligated to “teach to the test,” which can take away from their creativity in the classroom.

“I feel like it sets up not only the students for failure but also the school,” said Christina Reynolds, a freshman Pipeline tutor.

Senior Erica Smith, another Pipeline tutor, said fourth- and fifth-grade students at Olympic Hills Elementary, where she tutors, told their teachers they liked the WASL. Though they said they didn’t like tests, they felt they could do well on the WASL.

Eventually, all high school students must pass the WASL or meet its standards to graduate, but students cannot take the test more than three times. Reynolds said her cousin had to take the WASL several times before he passed it in high school. He was accepted to Western Washington University.

“You can’t make one test with the rich ethic diversity that Washington and many other states have,” Stickler said. “What it does, I think, is kill the love of learning for students.”