History of the WASL
The WASL is the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, which is a test to measure students' ability to meet the state's academic standards. This set of academic tests was created in response to the national Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) which mandates the testing of students to close the gap between the academic achievement of poverty-classified students and non-poverty students.
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Inception
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In 1993, the Washington state legislature decided to create a program to adequately test and measure the academic achievement of their students. The Commission on Student Learning was created and was assigned the task of creating a set of standards for the State of Washington's public schools. They developed the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EARLs) but then needed a test to assess if these new requirements were being taught and learned in the schools.
Development
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The WASL was developed by a test contractor with teacher input. Teachers proposed the types of questions and even wrote prototype questions, while the contractor created the specifications. The contractor then created the tests and sent them to teacher committees to review and revise, as well as to a bias and sensitivity committee whose job it was to determine if any questions misrepresented any specific group of students.
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Release
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The pilot release of the WASL was during the 1996-1997 school year, in which only fourth grade students took the reading, writing and math assessments. The following year both fourth and seventh grade students took the tests. During the 1998-1999 school year, tenth grade students were added to the assessment list.
Expansion
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In the 2002-2003 school year a new assessment test was added in the subject of science. That year only tenth grade students took all four tests, reading, math, writing and science. That same year eighth graders joined in on the assessments, but only took the science test. The following year, 2003-2004, fifth grade was added to the list testing only in science.
No Child Left Behind
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The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, signed by President Bush in 2002, reprioritized the importance of title one of the original ESEA legislation. This prompted more changes to the WASL, with third and sixth graders added to the list of those tested for both reading and math. The reading and math assessments were also added for those in the fifth and eighth grades.
Retesting
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Students in the tenth grade had to pass their WASL as a requirement for graduation, as mandated by the state of Washington in accordance with the NCLB. In the 2004-2005 school year, students in the eleventh and twelfth grades were allowed to retake the test if they did not pass in the tenth grade. A new WASL-basic test was created, which was actually the WASL test graded on a lower scale. Passing this test met graduation requirements but did not count toward the state proficiency assessment.
Current
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The WASL test was recently discontinued, with the final test given in August 2009. This assessment test has been replaced with the Measurements of Student Progress (MSP) for grades three through eight and the High School Proficiency Exam (HSPE) for those in high school.
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