By Mark

I do not envy my colleagues who teach high school math.

In the few years I've been teaching, I've watched the mad dash and scramble to react to the nearly annual changes in statewide math assessment. At this point in our building (as I'm sure is the same in every high school), students are working toward three different sets of graduation requirements related to math credit and assessment requirements. From WASL to HSPE to EOC. If only it were just a name change…

As a language arts teacher, I have witnessed relatively little change in terms of the content and skills demanded of my students in our high school statewide assessment. Our HSPE is essentially the WASL. I still feel that the test assesses the basic skills that ought to be expected for a student to earn a diploma that has any value.

I've tried to stay informed about the current state of assessment in Washington, but as it is an ever-moving target–with many moving parts–it is easy to miss something. And I missed something that I think is rather significant. I feel kinda dumb for having missed it. I'm sure somewhere along the line it was announced in a staff meeting or mentioned in an email, but the fact is, I missed it.

At a staff meeting this past week, our admin reticently tossed a grenade that most of us already knew was in the works: Common Core. They broached the subject delicately, admitting that they didn't want it to seem like "one more thing" to have to think about since we've already been wrestling Power Standards! in our PLCs for two years. Smugly, I sat back unfazed, as I knew my English department had been aligning our curriculum to the Common Core standards for about a year-and-a-half, ever since the talk of it became widespread in Washington and we saw the writing on the wall.

They presented a colorful document (which produced grumblings through the peanut gallery: "I hope we didn't pay to copy these…" as the topic of excessive copying has been a source of staffwide reprimand) which used hyperjargonated-to-the-point-of-incoherent diction such as "Develop and begin deissemination of content-specific transition supports" (Huh?) to articulate the multi-year plan to transition our statewide assessment system toward alignment with the Common Core. No earth-shattering revelations there.

Then it was mentioned that Washington is part of a consotrium of states who are working together to re-write state assessments to match the Common Core, which means that it is likely that a large number of states will be administering the same test by 2015 (meaning yet another new test for math). As my administrator pointed out, this has also led to talk of putting the ELA assessment in the 11th grade. And, apparently this was all set in motion in 2010.

Granted, these are perhaps not major changes. However, I try to keep myself well informed, and that this rather significant detail about the course of assessment in Washington had somehow slipped past me left me a bit unsteady. What else might there be that I have missed? I tried searching the OSPI website but found it not particularly helpful (not to mention not well updated…it mentioned that Spring 2011 HSPE scores were due to be released in June 2011). 

This made me think about all the other aspects of education I've tried to keep up with: TPEP and teacher evaluation, budgets and legislation, graduation requirements… I wonder what will be the ramifications of the details I've missed amid all the swirling changes? 

Spend some time at www.smarterbalanced.org (the home site for the 31-state consortium, of which Washington is designated a "lead state," and which as a collective received $175 million of RTTT money) to see what's been happening. Perhaps you knew. I didn't.