Don't Stick A Fork In It Yet...The Debate Around The WASL Bill Continues

In the final hours of the recently concluded session, legislators passed SB 6023 in a rush to sine die. This bill makes several significant changes to Washington's graduation requirements including pushing out the math and science requirement to 2013.

 

Other sections of the bill have education stakeholders scratching their heads. The bill creates a new loosely defined appeals system at the local level and even more WASL alternatives. It also removes the requirement that students take the WASL twice before accessing an alternative which has raised reliability and validity concerns among testing experts.

 

The Governor's senior level staff have indicated that she will be carefully reviewing this bill and might veto problematic sections. To read a letter outlining the Washington Roundtable's specific concerns related to SB 6023 click here [Link to: http://www.partnership4learning.org/resources.dyn/6023vetorequestfinal.pdf].