Now's not the time to go wobbly on WASL

The high-school class of 2008 comes down to it. The seniors who get out of school in June must meet state standards in reading and writing. The state has let them off the hook in math, but it still insists on reading and writing, or no diploma.

The students can meet the state's standard by passing the Washington Assessment of Student Learning test — these seniors first took it two years ago, as sophomores — or they can meet the standard with a combination of other test scores or a "collection of evidence." But they have to meet the standard.

Five months out, 84.5 percent of them already have.

This is a new thing, to insist on a standard — new for the state and new for them. Since childhood, these students have been swathed in egalitarian softness. They have been praised on the playfield when they didn't win. They have been promoted to the next grade without question. Now, at 18, they face this new hurdle. It is important for them to get over it. Trying is not enough. They have to do it.

The legislators who mandated this 15 years ago knew it would be painful, so they postponed it past the millennium. Now the question is: Do we mean it?

On Monday, senators held a hearing in Olympia on Senate Bill 6540, which would say, "No, we don't."

The bill would put off the reading and writing requirement until 2012. That is what we did with math, on the argument that the kids hadn't failed, the system had. Give the system a little more time. What's notable is that at Monday's hearing only one person, a spokeswoman for the Tulalip Tribes, made that argument. Everyone else who argued for postponing the reading and writing standard wanted to postpone it permanently.

And they had some points. One was that the push for reading, writing and math had cut back on offerings in art, music and languages. Sam Fields, a teacher at Bethel Junior High, Spanaway, added that taking and preparing for the test uses up 24 days. "I'd rather have the 24 days," he said.

No doubt, all this testing has made work less fun for the more-imaginative teachers. But it has also done a lot of good.

Arcella Hall, former principal of Grandview High School in the Yakima Valley, made a push there for six years. The school is 80 percent Hispanic — and she said at the hearing that all but eight students in the class of 2008 have met standards in reading and writing.

Seattle's Rainier Beach High School, majority African-American, has had big gains in WASL scores since 2002, as have other schools.

At the hearings, the main argument against the requirement was that some kids would fail, and it would be painful for them. "We all got a diploma," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen, D-Eatonville, referring to her graduation decades ago. "Did you have to take a test?"

No, I didn't. But my son has to, and I'm glad of it. It says to him, "You are now entering a world in which you may fail." At 18, the consequences of failure are not irreversible, but it is time that they are felt.

Competitive urgency had to be increased in the public high school in some way. Citizens were offered vouchers and charters, and they voted them down. We have the WASL and the alternative measures instead. It is a single standard, hard for students at the bottom and easy for students who are university-bound. And yet — how else to install a sense of urgency in the kids who were drifting?

Gov. Christine Gregoire has said flatly that the reading and writing standards will stand. (And on that, Dino Rossi agrees.)

If the pass rate for the class of 2008, now 84.5 percent, can get past 90 percent — and that should be do-able — the reform can hold its ground. We shall see whether students know more and whether employers make so many complaints.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com