Editorial: Lowering standards a disservice to Washington students

Testing, testing … why all this testing?

Many high school parents and their students are wondering the same thing, but it’s important to remember that the goal isn’t to inflict needless pain and suffering. Education has undergone waves of reforms dating back to the 1980s-era “Nation At Risk” report that warned that if American students couldn’t keep pace with global counterparts, the United States would lose its competitive edge. From there, the accountability movement sprung up as a way to measure progress, or the lack thereof. Increased testing is the result, and it remains an important component.

But the constant churn in assessments has left everyone frustrated. Over the past two decades, students have slogged through myriad acronyms (WASL, MSP, HSPE, etc.) in hope of satisfying education requirements and becoming productive citizens. Some of the tests were required by the feds, some by the state. But to students, they’re just tests, and there sure seems to be a lot of them.

And now along comes the SBAC, short for Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which is designed to replace the HSPE and the MSP. But in the meantime, the pileup of exams caused many juniors, at the behest of their parents, to opt out of the SBAC last spring. That’s a mistake. Those scores are needed to measure progress, and high scores can enable students to skip some college courses (and save money).

It is, without a doubt, a confusing time as the educational system transitions into the Common Core curriculum, which is what the SBAC assesses. The Washington Board of Education is feeling the heat, but it must stay true to the mission of raising standards for students and sticking to them. The mission began with raising the required credits for high school graduation, and it has continued with the adoption of Common Core.

With the SBAC coming online, the board had to figure out what scores students would need to achieve its worthy goal of “a high quality education system that prepares all students for college, career, and life.” But, last Wednesday, it adopted “cut scores” that fall short of that goal, saying that it needed to lower standards during the transition. SBACs are scored on a 1 to 4 scale. Scores of 3 and 4 indicate college readiness. The board settled on a score about midway between 2 and 3 as the graduation level for English and math.

The board promised to raise the standards later, but it didn’t set a deadline. Its decision reflects the nervousness throughout the education community about the consequences of raising standards. But it does students no good to seemingly excel in high school, then struggle in college or on the job. The standards need to be raised because about half of high school graduates require remediation in college, and employers in many fields can’t find enough qualified young workers.

So though it is a challenging transitional period, it’s important for educators and political leaders to pass this test of their leadership abilities.