By Senators Chase, Roach, McCoy, Hasegawa, Miloscia, Padden and Dansel. AN ACT Relating to assessments in public schools; amending RCW 28A.655.061, 28A.655.066, 28A.655.068, 28A.655.070, 28A.305.130, 28A.655.185, 28B.105.010, 28B.105.030, and 28B.105.060; amending 2013 2nd sp.s. c 22 s 1 (uncodified); adding a new section to chapter 28A.320 RCW; adding a new section to chapter 28A.655 RCW; adding new sections to chapter 28A.655 RCW; and declaring an emergency.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON: 

Sec. 1: 2013 2nd sp.s. c 22 s 1 (uncodified) is amended to read as follows: (1) Common core state standards have serious drawbacks including:

(a) Being copyrighted by a private trade group and therefore not subject to change or improvement as needed by Washington state legislators, teachers, and parents in the best interest of students in our state;

(b) Being developmentally inappropriate for students in elementary school;

(c) Missing numerous essential academic skills that were present in the prior Washington state essential academic learning requirements; and

(d) Providing no evidence of actually preparing students to be either career or college ready.

(2) The legislature further finds that the prior Washington state essential academic learning requirements were carefully written with feedback from Washington state teachers, are not copyrighted by any organization, are age appropriate, and include all of the essential academic skills required for a student to assume his or her place as a citizen of Washington state. It is therefore in the best interests of the students of Washington state to withdraw from the common core standards and return to the prior Washington state essential academic learning requirements.

3) The legislature further finds that the multistate English language arts and mathematics assessments for grades three through eight and grade eleven, known as the smarter balanced assessment consortium or SBAC, suffer from several serious drawbacks including:

(a) Having been aligned with the age inappropriate and academically incomplete common core standards;

(b) Using questions that are not developmentally appropriate;

(c) Using arbitrarily defined cut scores that unfairly label hundreds of thousands of students in Washington state as failures, even though Washington state students have historically scored among the highest in the nation and the highest in the world on national and international tests;

(d) Not fairly assessing the actual knowledge or abilities of students;

(e) Using tens of thousands of secret questions that have not been shown to be reliable or valid;

(f) Failing to provide either teachers or parents access to the secret questions so that teachers and parents can fairly prepare their students for these high stakes, high failure rate tests;

Requiring the use of a very large number of computers that many schools lack and do not have the funds to purchase; and

(h) Requiring the use of a complex computer interface that many students find confusing and that interferes with the ability of the assessment to accurately assess a student’s actual knowledge and abilities.

The legislature further finds that the prior Washington state measurement of student progress does not suffer from these drawbacks.

It is therefore in the best interests of the students of Washington state to withdraw from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium assessments and return to the prior Washington state measurement of student progress assessments and to require that samples of questions similar to all questions asked of students be available to all parents and teachers in Washington state at least one year before the questions are asked of our students.

The legislature further finds that the cut scores of the past measurement of student progress state tests were arbitrarily set and not aligned with the actual academic ability of Washington state students as measured by the national assessment of education progress basic level. For example, in the 2013 school year, the cut score on the eighth grade measurement of student progress math test was arbitrarily set so that only thirty-two percent of Washington students passed the test. But that same year, seventy-nine percent of Washington state eighth graders achieved a passing score of basic or higher on the national assessment of educational progress, a score that was seven percent above the national average and qualified Washington state eighth graders as among the best at math of any students in the nation and even in the entire world when adjusted for poverty.

The legislature finds that it is not appropriate to use artificial cut scores to unfairly label sixty-eight percent of Washington state students as failures when in fact Washington state students have among the highest achievement level of any students in the nation and in the world. The legislature therefore directs the superintendent of public instruction to use cut scores on the measurement of student progress that align with the most recent basic performance on the most closely related national assessment of education progress assessment. For example, if seventy-nine percent of Washington state students scored at a basic level or higher on the most recent national assessment of education progress math assessment, then the cut score for the Washington state measurement of student progress assessment should be set so that at least seventy-nine percent of students pass the measurement of student progress assessment.

The legislature intends to reduce the overall costs of the state assessment system by returning to the much less expensive and much more accessible Washington state measurement of student progress.

The legislature further intends that the state of Washington will have one set of student performance standards for the purpose of high school graduation as significant research has shown that standardized tests have not shown any correlation with a student’s career or college readiness greater than the determination of a student’s grades from those who are best able to access the students’ actual knowledge and ability, the students’ classroom teachers.