Letourneau lands on WASL as answer, raising questions
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OLYMPIA - Questions on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning go through rigorous review to make sure they are not too hard or too easy, test for the right things, and are not racist or sexist.
But professional test writers, academics, teachers, parents and thousands of students who took the test in a practice round didn't notice that one correct answer sounds an awful lot like the name of the state's most infamous teacher and convicted child rapist: Mary K. Letourneau.
That was discovered Tuesday by sophomores at North Thurston High School in Lacey.
In the 10th-grade math WASL that students began taking this week, students are asked to pick the route on which "Roger" is driving his bus, based on mileage information about four cities. The right answer is C. Mayri, then Clay, then Lee, then Turno.
Say it quickly: MayriClay LeeTurno.
That's way too close to be a coincidence, an angry Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson said yesterday: "It was deliberately designed. This is not an error."
The question and answer were written by a contract test writer who did work for Riverside Publishing of Chicago, the firm hired by the state to create the tests.
"We have been able to trace this item back to the source. It is clearly intentional," said Riverside President John Laramy.
He declined to identify the writer but said the company is consulting with attorneys about what its options are legally.
"It's clear we need to put in another check for malicious intent," Laramy said. "I've worked in this business for 20 years and I've never heard of anything like this."
The principal of the school that discovered it is equally shocked.
"It is remarkable that nobody brought it to someone's attention before this," North Thurston High School Principal Karen Eitreim said. "I can't believe nobody noticed."
Letourneau is a former Burien teacher serving a seven-year prison term for raping a 13-year-old middle-school student who fathered her two youngest children. She began having sex with Vili Fualaau when he was 12 and she was 34, married and a mother of four.
Her case was well publicized when she pleaded guilty in 1997 and later when she was out on probation and police discovered she had renewed her sexual relationship with Fualaau and had become pregnant again. Her probation was revoked, and she was sentenced to the seven-year term.
That was the year the test question was written, Bergeson said.
The question about Roger's bus route, like all questions on the standardized tests, was designed to see if Washington students are learning what they're supposed to. It went through many reviews, beginning with a check at Riverside.
Questions are then checked in Washington by a math-review committee to make sure the math or logic is correct, and reviewed by university professors and high-school and middle-school teachers.
"They are all math minds," Bergeson said. "They look at the math, not the words."
All questions are also checked by a Fairness Committee of parents and educators who look for bias.
In 1998, after all the committees approved the question, it was put on a pilot test given to thousands of students. It was then rechecked to make sure that, statistically, it was scoring properly. Then it was put on a waiting list of questions, Bergeson said, "like a virus sitting there waiting to go off."
This is the first year it was distributed statewide as part of a test that would be scored.
Tuesday morning, 10th-graders at North Thurston High were in the gym taking the math assessment when one after another discovered the answer to question No. 8.
"When the kids noticed it, they thought it was odd," Eitreim said. "They were surprised to find it on the test and that it was the right answer."
Tuesday afternoon, she sent the superintendent of public instruction what Bergeson described as a "real barn-burner" of an e-mail, asking how the question could be on the test.
Bergeson said she sent an e-mail yesterday to every high school in the state telling them not to have students answer the question. She said that it will not be graded on those tests already completed.
This isn't the first WASL faux pas: Two years ago, 406,000 essays got perfect or inflated marks on the writing section due to a scoring error. The tests had to be rescored by hand.
Seattle Times staff reporter Keiko Morris contributed to this report.