Randy Dorn said he thinks the state is doing a good job with “the students who stick with us for 12 years.” But: “What are we going to do with the students who don’t make it?” He said the state needs to do more to keep students in school.

He said there’s even more work to be done: Students who graduate from Washington schools with a good SAT score and grade point average are still dropping out of University of Washington at a high rate after two years, he said. Those are all things the state should look into.

Go here for more information on the WASL results.

Tags: Dorn, WASL

Now state schools superintendent Randy Dorn is back up.

He said the WASL hasn’t gotten easier and won’t, but that the new standards will allow the state to go much deeper into understanding why students are failing the test.

“The one thing I want people to understand is we plateau,” he said. “I want people to understand that.”

He said the state’s done a good job with the top third of students. The second third was helped along by a statewide push. The bottom third, he said, is going to take more time and more money.

Tags: Dorn, WASL

Alan Burke with the state schools superintendent’s office is now up. He says the WASL scores are flatlining. “Plateauing or flat,” is how he described scores.

But, he said, big changes are coming to math and other sections.

“We have a number of schools that will be ‘Inadequate Yearly Progress’ in school improvement,” he said: “All 50 states have this requirement but of course the standards are different in every state,” Burke said. Federal law requires that schools break students into 9 different groups, then each group is measured in four ways. “Schools, when you talk about subjects and groups, there’s 37 categories of not making it and a school missing one category means the school does not make it,” he said.

“AYP,” which was mentioned earlier, is “Adequate Yearly Progress.” It’s the No Child Left Behind metric for whether a school is doing a sufficient job.

Burke said 30 percent of schools made Adequate Yearly Progress. “There’ll be many, many more schools sending out AYP letters on choice within the next few weeks,” he said: When a school doesn’t make “Adequate Yearly Progress,” they must send out a letter to parents telling them they have a right to send their students to another school.

Tags: WASL

Go here to watch the press conference on WASL scores now. Or: Refresh the blog and follow along on the blog.

Tags: WASL

State Schools Superintendent Randy Dorn is up at the WASL press conference: “Although this is a WASL release, it also has a lot to do with AYP… I really have a view about AYP and it’s basically that it’s going to give you the impression that we have way more schools that need improvement … actually, that’s not true,” he said. He said the schools in that category are getting better faster.

“The federal government is actually failing us in the actual law of No Child Left Behind,” he said, adding that it undermines the confidence in public education. “We have actually done a very good job. I have always had a firm belief in my life that you get a lot more out of people with encouragement and incentives rather than punishment, and that’s what AYP does: Punishment.”

You can watch the press conference LIVE at TVW.org now.

“We need to move forward on what I call ‘Reform 2,’” Dorn said. He said that includes resources and “more diagnostic information to teachers.”

“The last press conference that we held was on the WASL and I’ve heard many people say and it’s been talked about: Is it going to be a different assessment? Absolutely,” he said. Dorn said the WASL will not be given again. Now, it’s called “Measures of Student Progress,” or MSP. “I want to be real clear, high school students will still have to take an assessment, it will still be a graduation requirement.”

Tags: Dorn, WASL

Ninety-three percent of high school seniors passed the reading and writing tests in the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL — a test that state school superintendent Randy Dorn has pledged to do away with.

The results were announced today and represent a small increase over last year’s 92 percent passage rate. Full results will not be available until the fall.

Dorn said he applauded those who passed the test, but said the state’s graduation rate must be examined. The graduating class of 2008, for example, shed about 21 percent of its students over four years. Among American Indians, about 86 percent passed the WASL, but fewer than half graduated, for example.

Dorn recently announced an initiative to move the WASL test online. That will be phased in over a few years beginning in 2010. See all the details here.

Tags: WASL

Today at 10 a.m. — in about 15 minutes — we’ll have the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council live. That will replay at 6 and 9 p.m. and will also be available on our web site.

At noon, we’ll webcast the WASL results with schools superintendent Randy Dorn. That will air at 8 p.m.

At 7 and 10 p.m., Austin Jenkins will cover the revenue forecast on Inside Olympia. Don’t miss that.

And, of course, if you can’t watch video at work, please visit the blog throughout the day for updates on all of the above.

Tags: Revenue forecast, WASL

Randy Dorn’s appearance before the House Education Committee — to explain his proposal to kick the WASL to the curb — finished up about early this afternoon.

During the hearing, he elaborated on his plans and why they were necessary. He also said cooperation with the Legislature was important — a slightly different message than his press conference last week, where he said he had the power to scrap the test.

I’m going over everything now. In the meantime, here’s one tidbit I found interesting: Dorn said the state shuffles around 700,000 test booklets for the WASL every year. With computer testing, that huge amount of paper vanishes. He said Oregon has recently scrapped paper-based testing, and he’s had conversations with them about it.

Watch the video here.

Tags: Dorn, education, WASL

On Monday: Dick Thompson, Gov. Gregoire’s liaison to federal stimulus, said publicly that the state may not get as much of the federal stimulus as he originally thought.

On Tuesday: Cheryl Oullette, aka Cheryl the Pig Lady, testified about the importance of a loan program for mobile slaughter units. The units would allow small farmers (like Cheryl) to have their meat butchered in USDA-inspected facilities, which means they can more easily sell to restaurants or at farmers markets and donate to food banks.
Tuesday was also the inauguration, of course.

On Wednesday, state schools chief Randy Dorn announced a plan to replace the WASL.

Later that night on The Impact, Jen had the first reaction from lawmakers:

For the rest of the week … (more…)

Tags: Budget, WASL, week in review

Dorn’s proposal to replace the WASL includes a provision that the test is administered twice a year. That’s only half the story: Students who pass in the fall won’t have to retake the test in spring.

I talked to Nathan Olson, media relations manager for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, about it. He confirmed that the test is like a check-up: Pass every year on the first try, and you’ll take the WASL seven times (once in 3-8 grades, once in 10th grade.)

However, if every fall a student does poorly, they can take the test in spring with the hopes of passing.

One thing: “Fail” and “pass” are another can of worms. Let’s just say “proficient” and “not proficient.”

Tags: Dorn, WASL