WASL woe for some, relief for others

The preliminary--and by preliminary, I mean satisfying in the way only a blogger could appreciate--results of the WASL-that-counts are in, and they're a mix of "gains" and disappointments.

KOMO:

Well over half of the 71,136 students tested passed the reading test - 60,873; 10,263 failed to meet the standard.

In writing, 59,196 of the 70,812 students met the standard; 11,616 did not.

In math, 37,866 of the 70,255 scored met the standard; 32,359 did not.

Seattle Times:

Preliminary numbers show nearly 86 percent of 10th-graders passed the reading section of the 2006 WASL; 84 percent passed writing and 54 percent passed math.

But those initial scores, released this morning by the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, do not include about 10,000 student records that, for a number of reasons, need to be examined. Some students have been counted twice, for example. Others are special-education students who this year had the option of taking the fourth-or seventh-grade versions of the WASL.

The Olympian:

Of the 70,255 who took the math test, 37,866 met or exceeded the standard and another 32,359 did not pass. The improvements in mathematics were most noteworthy in the movement of students out of the lowest achievement level — a one-third reduction, state officials said.

Of the 71,136 who took the reading test, 60,873 students met or exceeded the standard and another 10,263 did not pass. More than half of the students — 43,758 — scored in the highest performance level. This year’s results also show a two-thirds reduction in the number of students scoring in the lowest performance level.

Of the 70,812 who took the writing test, 59,196 met or exceeded the standard and another 11,616 did not pass.

There were nearly 10,000 more students than last year who achieved the writing standard, and there were two-thirds fewer students performing in the lowest level.

Gains were probably due to the fact that the test had to be taken seriously. The disappointing result in mathematics, though, means that close to 45% probably failed all three sections, though it's impossible to be sure with so many discrepancies (and the fact that the three statistics can't be combined).

There are also discrepancies in last year's statistics. KOMO claims, "Last year, 46.9 percent of 10th graders who took the WASL passed all three sections," while the Times claims, "Last year, 42 percent of sophomores passed all three."

I won't know for some time how my own students fared.