Letters to the Editor

Published 4:41 pm Tuesday, December 2, 2008

WASL

It’s bait and switch

The time has come to stop spending time and money on WASL testing because the goal of systemic change from a curriculum of proficiency as mere information processing to a curriculum focused on proficiency in problem-solving has been reached.

The bloated bureaucracy created to reach that goal has now pulled a bait and switch on the taxpayers by changing the goal of WASL testing from identifying failures in the educational system to the new goal of a graduation requirement for students. As a graduation requirement, it is needlessly wasting teachers’ time while increasing the number of educational bureaucrats, who have merely made the WASL into a cumbersome and expensive duplication of other standardized tests.

WASL testing and re-testing is now creating large, unnecessary, and expensive problems, including the huge problem of greater investment producing diminishing returns. Let’s belatedly declare victory and tell our legislators to boot the bureaucrats and retire this test.

Tom Driscoll

Poulsbo