WASL: Community's help crucial, scholars say

There is no silver bullet, it's not rocket science, but it does take a village to get a classroom of students all the way through their years of study to graduation.

A handful of scholars in the state's leading teaching academies say that's the only cure for the challenges that gave rise to federal and state student-testing mandates.

"We talk about the achievement gap," said Bill McDiarmid, Boeing professor of teacher-education at the University of Washington. "We ought to be talking about the resource gap."

The schools in Seattle's poorer neighborhoods come easily to mind, he said. Especially where poverty is the community's exclamation point, where parents don't lead the way with open checkbooks and summer trips to Europe, children need all the community help they can get.

"You've got kids coming from home situations which, by themselves, are challenging," McDiarmid said. "Then, of course, there are the kids from homes without even the linguistic knowledge to do well on tests. And yet you still have teachers out there busting their butts."

What's more, he said, assessment-focused education is based today mostly on the three R's -- reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic -- leaving to chance a whole range of subjects that otherwise might lead to participation in America's democracy.

"I think we've lost sight of those loftier goals," McDiarmid said. "Right now, it's a matter of learning what you need to go into the business world. But to create a foundation for this democracy, my sense is we've totally lost sight of what it takes -- the ability to hold a conversation, to listen to others, to engage in public debate, to evaluate information on public issues.

"We have all this stuff coming at us, whether it's the terrorists or nanotechnology, and we need people who can evaluate and investigate those issues so they can make the right decisions."

Sue Nolen, a UW education psychologist, agreed.

"Teachers are being pressured to focus on tested subjects, and, in some places, social studies and other subjects are being eliminated."

The WASL eventually will include a social studies test, Nolen hastened to point out.

It was a state decision that got the support of social studies teachers, she said, "because they were afraid that if there was no social studies test, social studies instruction would disappear."

With an eye on improving academic performance, the UW's School of Education has begun to offer help to its teacher-graduates across the region, said Sally Lutrell-Montes, associate director of a Carnegie-funded program, Teachers for a New Era, at the school.

"We know that often new teachers sometimes don't find the kind of support that allows them to be successful," she said. "They may or may not have mentors. They may need help dealing with classroom discipline. They may feel isolated from their colleagues.

"If that's true, we've found they will be less likely to stay on in teaching or in schools where they may have to face the more challenging kids, and if that's true, if they don't thrive, they tend not to stay, so a school ends up with that revolving door, with new teachers coming in and going out quickly."

Marsha Riddle Buly, an assistant professor of education at Western Washington University, contributed to a UW study of children who failed the WASL, and also is concerned about assessment-driven education and teachers' need for more time and support.

"Magic bullet? There isn't one," she said. "The magic is for teachers to have the time, the resources and the support they need so they can, first -- and most important -- assess their kids' needs."

In sports, Buly said, "the first thing coaches do is assess their kids. What is it they know? What can they do already? They don't just throw a bunch of kids out on the field without first getting to know them -- which is why the canned-curriculum stuff doesn't work."

Similarly, in medicine, she said, "You don't go to the doctor and say, 'I'm 40,' and expect the doc to say, 'Fine. Here's the prescription for 40-year-olds.'

"But that's what we're doing in education -- with 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds, all the way up to 18-year-olds. It's crazy."

Deborah McCutchen, the UW School of Education's associate dean for research, said the WASL was well designed to be linked to meaningful instructional goals. There is no finer test to teach to.

"But," she said, "with the graduation requirement now linked to it, and (the new federal mandates) as well, it's doing things it was never intended to do."

P-I reporter Gordy Holt can be reached at 206-448-8356 or gordyholt@seattlepi.com.

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