Posts published in November 2006

After reading twice the Monday Gregoire/Bergeson press release on the math portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning - WASL - and considering its history, the chain of realistic conclusions seems clear.

The WASL was intended as a measure of how well students in the upper grades of Washington public schools are learning certain core subjects. So what do you do if the WASL doesn't indicate what you want it to? Try teaching to the WASL - take time away from general learning so that students can do better on the test. (There's been no lack of reportage about that tendency around the state, and even of students driven to WASL-induced stress illness over their test-taking.) And if that still doesn't work? Change the standards, which is what the Gregoire/Bergeson "temporary alternative" to WASL math standards, to be proposed to the legislature next session, is essentially about.

State education agencies have reported "progress" on reading and writing test scores, but ongoing "diffuculty" in the math sections. That has led to protests, and elected officials - notably, officials who will be on the ballot in less than two years - have responded. Specifically: "Governor Gregoire and Superintendent Bergeson are proposing that students who have not passed the high school WASL continue to take rigorous math classes until they graduate or pass the test. Taking the test or an approved alternative would be required annually. The option of allowing students to graduate without passing the math WASL would remain in place for three years - for the graduating classes of 2008, 2009 and 2010."

As to where that's leading, consider the logic in this quote from Governor Chris Gregoire: "I want to let students and parents know that we are listening to their concerns and we believe this plan promotes math skills without penalizing responsible, hard-working students and teachers." But - that formulation logically suggests - letting slide the irresponsible, indolent students and teachers.

There is in all this a clue for the legislature, which is that it might profitably begin peering outside the WASL box in consideration of a superior mousetrap.

The quite serious subject of where the Washington Republican Party goes from here is given a thoughtful treatment in "Make or Break Time for the Washington GOP," a Matt Rosenberg post on Sound Politics. It isn't the final word on the subject, but it constitutes the best opening shot we've seen yet.

The situation is serious indeed, and he stakes are high. One of the comments to Rosenberg's post notes acidly, "WA is now a one party state. There are many such states in the US, and the one thing they have in common is that the out-party (the GOP in WA) can sometimes win the executive's office, but the statehouse is lost basically for a generation or more."

That's often true. Washington Republicans should look east to the plight of the Idaho Democrats for a vision of their future if they fail to reverse what has now become a decade-long slide. There, Democrats have been out of control of either chamber of the legislature for 46 years.

Of course, it doesn't have to be that way. Washington and Oregon have each provided more rapid shifts in recent decades. The current Washington issue is that the switch looks structural. It was shown up starkly in a Seattle Times article and, especially, a map published today. The map shows the east King County legislative districts, seven or eight of them (depending on how you count) which only a decade ago were nearly all a lock for Republicans, and now are - with the partial split exception of District 41 - solidly Democratic. Much of that happened on November 7, but the trend has been building, accelerating, throughout this decade. It's not a momentary lapse; this has been in the works.

If that means the suburbs as well as the central city of Seattle have gotten off the fence and landed on the Democratic side, then you can just about say: game over. Between those places and the other Democratic bases in the state - most of the rest of the Puget Sound area and most of the Olympic peninsula, plus part of Vancouver and central Spokane - there isn't enough votes everywhere else to counterbalance. The Seattle suburbs were the key.

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