Parent Empowerment Network
PO Box 494
Spanaway, WA 98387

March 13, 2007

An open letter to:
Dr. Teresa Bergeson
Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Dear Dr. Bergeson;

As of today, 51,929 members of the class of 2008 who have not passed the WASL are scheduled to be denied diplomas. Based on their 7th grade WASL performance, we can estimate that at least 35,000 members of the class of 2009 and 30,000 members of the class of 2010 will be added to the WASL casualty list.

The "reading and writing are fine" media blitz of March 4, including your own opinion column in the Seattle PI, again claimed an 87% success rate in reading. In your continued use of this figure you have succeeded in fooling or co-opting the governor, the Washington Roundtable, WSSDA, many school and district administrators, many legislative members, and, to be sure, newspaper editorial boards and their limitedly informed and unsuspecting readers. You do not fool 21st century parents and teachers who understand the 19th century statement made by British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

For historical perspective, a sampling of your words:






2007- Education in Crisis:

You, Dr. Bergeson, have betrayed your 1999 promise of a "developing accountability system to ensure that ALL students succeed." By doing so, you have betrayed the very students that HB 1209 pledged to help. Categories of students who were left behind prior to 1993 not only remain behind but are being academically slaughtered by a test that discourages, demeans, and destroys any aspiration of academic engagement these students could have had in a confidence-building environment.

In 1998, you dismissed the suggestions of Assessment Training Institute President Richard Stiggins, who wrote, "I am troubled by the reporting plan for special populations... Are you considering making students sit through an exam on which they and we know that they will score near zero, just so that the score can be averaged with others? To do so would be immoral, not to mention unsound pedagogically." The immoral practice of testing virtually every student with the WASL, regardless of special need or language barrier, continues, nine years after these words were written to the Commission on Student Learning Accountability Taskforce. In fact, in 2002, you rushed to expand WASL to fulfill NCLB testing requirements, knowing full well that this move would sentence special populations to federally mandated WASL participation.

There was a certain self-serving political air wafting about your 2003-04 revelations that "We must abandon our obsession with the WASL," and "We have to stop describing everything in terms of the WASL." Low and behold, for a moment, some thought you had seen the light and it had set you free of your WASL obsession; that you were finally hearing parents, teachers, and independent testing experts, who had, for a number of years, been providing evidence of the need for WASL policy reversal. Some went so far as to speculate that you were now truly concerned about the havoc your test was wreaking, that good testing practice would prevail, and that WASL would be relegated to its proper use as a systems measure.

Alas, the new Bergeson tenor was a fleeting anomaly. The experience of a November '04 success removed all concerns about overemphasis on WASL, and, by 2005, you were back to selling the exorbitant WASL not only as the quintessential assessment tool but as a diagnostic instrument, the results of which would form the basis for development of individual academic learning plans for all WASL-failing students. This, despite the WASL Technical Report warning, provided to your agency by the state's test contractor, Riverside Publishing Company: "Scores from one test given on a single occasion should never be used to make important decisions about students' placement, the type of instruction they receive, or retention in a given grade level in school."

In 2005, you stated, "An objective measure such as the WASL is necessary to keep us honest about the skills that students have." I find your use of the words objective and honest in the same breath as WASL disingenuous, when you have no compunctions about the disappearing class of 2008. You have reduced the "roughly 84,000 students" cited in your 2005 speech to roughly 68,500-- the "n" you use to demonstrate WASL success in reading and writing scores computed based on "complete test records." In 2006, you developed a "new and improved" system of reporting, which displaced thousands of students in categories that had previously been included.

Evidently, WASL math is serving you and the governor very well. Your widely accepted presentation of 87% and 86% respective success rates in reading and writing, when the record shows only 66% and 65% of ALL students in the class of 2008 have actually passed these sections of the test (ACLU, 2007), displays creative-- nay, ingenious-- reasoning, representing, and relating skills. Voilà !  'WASL Wonderland' to match the Texas and Massachusetts 'Miracles,' both rapidly rendered 'mirages' by public scrutiny. (Even WASL math cannot acceptably explain the wasteful travesty of the PAS summer school program that cost state taxpayers $28.5 million and somewhat ineffectively served 5,217 students.)

Of the actual 89,970 students who entered high school as the class of 2008, 51,929 are marked failures by the "Certificate of Mastery" exam that is now a graduation requirement. The adjustments to the math requirement, recommended and promoted to the legislature by you and the governor, raise the issue of discrimination, if not political pandering. Math only adjustments would allow the majority of middle and upper income general education students to escape the WASL guillotine while a super majority of low income, minority, second language, and special education students would be denied high school diplomas based on WASL reading and/or writing failure.

You, the media, and the Washington Roundtable pummel the legislature and the public with "stay the course" and "damn the torpedoes" fervor. System failure and the facts of inequitable service to students have been articulated in numerous legislative hearings, yet you continue to manipulate the numbers and percentages of success with impunity, in order to justify the full use of reading and writing WASL for diploma denial. You reduced 51,929 members of the class of 2008 who have not yet passed the WASL to 30,467 in your August retakes report. Your mendacious stunts have confused the numbers to the point that, by last Friday, a Bellingham Herald editorial reduced the math failure number to "more than 20,000 students." Though this is a true statement, most would argue that even your artificially low number of 30,000 is considerably "more" than 20,000.

Gulping and spewing propaganda you have provided them, your media surrogates have continually attempted to publicly discredit those of us, including legislators, who know that retaining any part of the WASL graduation requirement is unconscionably unfair to at-risk and struggling students. For instance, editorial boards continue to promote the wrongful information you have provided them that WASL is no longer a "high-stakes test" because graduation alternatives are in place and fully operational.

When, in 2006, the legislature passed the law giving you the authority and responsibility to create alternatives for students who fail the WASL, you opted out! You have failed to implement, in a timely and accessible manner, the alternatives you yourself presented to the legislature. The law requires students to fail the WASL twice before gaining access to alternatives. Parent after parent has contacted my organization for help regarding alternatives for their students who have now failed the WASL twice. School and district personnel are unable to accommodate parental requests because they are unaware of the alternatives being used, do not have adequate resources to offer the alternatives, and are, in general, befuddled about state requirements, considering the political backtracking going on by your office and others. (For instance, your proposed removal of the PSAT score and class grade comparison as options.)

Your failure to realistically offer WASL alternatives is merely the most recent thread in your pattern of conduct--a pattern by which you have wooed legislators, the Washington Roundtable and the media; bullied your own staff and district administrators; belittled teachers; and condescended to parents. Problems that existed upon your arrival in the Office of Superintendent, in 1997, have been exacerbated rather than solved by your continual concentration on building not only an assessment system but an entire educational system predicated on one test. Your ambition matched well the statement made to you in a September 30, 1993 letter from a colleague, "Control the test, control the world. (or at least the school)" (OSPI Archive, 1993).

Your deceptive and deliberate performance, throughout the past 14 years, has culminated in an education system in crisis. Your administrative failings, which continue to result in instability of the agency and constant upheaval ("revolving door") of staff and agency leadership, were well documented in the McKinsey report of May 9, 2001.

The ongoing "incontrovertible evidence" you proffer to argue that "we are on the right path" fails to provide a complete picture of the state of education for our students, particularly our minority students. In your March 4th Seattle PI column, you continued your selective use of minority data by touting the gains of African American fourth and eighth graders on the math section of NAEP, while conveniently failing to cite the lack of progress or comparatively low scores of other minority groups. For instance, according to the NAEP 2005 report:




You also fail to cite the performance of Washington students on the reading section of NAEP. In reading:




Washington students have scored above the national average on NAEP since Washington began taking part in the test. However, no consistent, significant improvement in NAEP scores has been seen during your administration. On the 2005 fourth grade NAEP report, you are quoted, "I'm very proud of our students and our schools and the progress they have made on this national test. It mirrors what we know from the results we get every year from our own state assessment- education reform is making a true difference in our students' achievement." Flat lined NAEP scores do not "mirror" skyrocketing WASL scores.

At any rate, using the scores of minority students on the NAEP to make any claim of success or failure is inappropriate, since the NAEP report states: "Because the number of Washington's minority students who were selected to participate in 4th grade NAEP was relatively small, results must be interpreted carefully" (NAEP, 2005). "Estimates based on smaller subgroups are likely to have relatively large standard errors. As a consequence, some seemingly large differences may not be statistically significant" (NCES).

At the risk of belaboring the above points, I have gone to great lengths in my research and in preparing this letter, because you, Dr. Bergeson, and your staff have indulged in the highest level of spin, verging on demagoguery beyond ethical behavior. The tragedy of this behavior is that few who fashion themselves leaders in shaping education policy have taken the time to examine the validity of your claims. Shame on you, and shame on them for being so willing to accept your claims at face value, when the stakes are so high and the damage so great to so many of our precious students and to our entire public education community.

Based on the above documentation and rationale, my organization demands that you cease this untenable, reprehensible behavior and stop cherry picking and resorting to fraudulent justification for maintaining the WASL debacle. Our educators, parents, and students deserve better leadership from the highest level educator in our state.

In the name of decency and for the sake of 51,929 students whose futures you hold in your hands, you, who know best, must now go to the governor, the legislature, and the Roundtable and correct the record. You must provide them the real numbers of WASL failure, and you must find and account for the lost students of the class of 2008.


Sincerely,
Juanita Doyon, Director
Parent Empowerment Network

cc: leadership, educational community, citizenry, and media of Washington State, ACLU, Jeffry Finer, Disabilities Rights Advocates, Columbia Legal Services




Back to Index
Back to Daily Journal