A WASLing We Go

A number of my grandchildren are attending public schools in Washington (two year trial). Washington is attempting to comply with the NCLB (and its antecedents) testing requirements through the institution of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). The State Legislature (AKA as the Washington State Home for Microencephalics) determined that passage of the WASL in the senior year of high school was going to be a prerequisite for graduation. Well, they did until a precursor test was given last year to high school sophomores with the result being a failure rate of more than 50% on the math portion, at which point the legislators took the bull by the horns, grasped the nettle and punted the ball off the field. Thirteen years and $100 million just weren't enough for the educrats to dumb down the tests that actually require specific knowledge and correct answers to the point where half the kids can bluff their way through as they do with reading and writing.

Should parents in Washington wish to determine why young Festus and Marigold can't add, they need look no farther than the front page of the Sample math WASL questions of the Port Angeles School District where they will find writing rather than basic computational skill holding the preeminent position:

Why Students Should Write in Math Class


Writing should be an integral part of teaching all subjects. Writing is used as a tool to help students think about ideas.

Progress has been slow in the area of writing in mathematics. Mathematics is seen as a subject that communicates through the manipulation of symbols in orderly ways, not as one that uses words to express ideas. This view is unfortunate - and misleading.

The process of writing requires gathering, organizing, and clarifying thoughts. It demands finding out what you know and don't know. It calls for thinking clearly. Similarly, doing mathematics depends on gathering, organizing, and clarifying thoughts, finding out what you know and don't know, and thinking clearly. Although the final representation of a mathematical pursuit looks very different from the final product of a writing effort, the mental journey is, at its base, the same - making sense of an idea and presenting it effectively.

Writing can assist math instruction in two ways - by helping children make sense of mathematics and by helping teachers understand what children are learning.

My grandchildren are not in the Port Angeles district but the district in which they live takes precisely the same attitude, elevating written communication to the point where I've been spending time concocting arithmetic drills so that my granddaughter can enter the fifth grade having mastered the basic multiplication tables. I'm not a big fan of rote learning but there are foundational elements to arithmetic which both lend themselves to that method and are truly basic. How far can any individual go in math without having mastered the very elementary basics? How much weight should clarity in expression be given in assessing an incorrect answer to 6 X 8?

Beyond that, why in the world would anyone whose IQ exceeds the two digit threshold trust an educrat whose writing skills permit this gargle:

Progress has been slow in the area of writing in mathematics. Mathematics is seen as a subject that communicates through the manipulation of symbols in orderly ways, not as one that uses words to express ideas. This view is unfortunate - and misleading.

I understand that the educrat who generated that drivel was shooting low based upon his perception of the intelligence of the intended audience but the quality of communication on a peer to peer basis between educrats is no better. If there were pain receptors in brain cells, an intelligent person would be screaming in agony before finishing the first paragraph of most of the garbage which passes for "communication" between educrats. Unless they were wholly in tune with 'progressive thought', in which case they would swoon over the careful attention paid to the 'disadvantaged' coupled with the even more careful attention paid to the claim of 'if we were just adequately funded'.

What comes after the progs have successfully dumbed down kids to the point where they believe that larger numbers are always oppressors of smaller numbers? That 15 has an unfair advantage over 10 and there is no way to fix it because if 10 were given 3 of 15's ill gotten advantage of 5 then 13 could still lord it over 12? Will they, perhaps, be encouraged to turn to credentialed "experts" for to resolve such apparently insoluble problems?

I'm not sure that our experiment with public schools will make it to two full years.

UPDATE: If I possessed a functioning brain cell to call my very own, I would have checked into Kitchen Table Math where Catherine Johnson continues to slug it out. One pass through and I now have 3 sites for decent math primers.