High school graduation will get tougher by 2013

More than 90 percent of the state’s high school seniors passed the reading and writing portions of Washington State’s new High School Proficiency Exam this year but the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) says scores in math are still down. Only about 70 percent of seniors passed their math test this year.

The OSPI said it also expects that test scores will continue to drop statewide as it reorganizes its graduation requirements, and continues to make changes to testing requirements for graduation.

To graduate from high school in Washington, the old standard required the student to complete a minimum of 19 credits. That all changes by 2013 when the state will require public school students to complete a minimum of 20 credits, with the addition of a third math credit.

The OSPI has also said many local school districts plan to require students to earn credits beyond the state minimum.

The new Certificate of Academic Achievement and Certificate of Individual Achievement are what students can expect to receive from the new testing schedules. Theses certificates tell families, schools, businesses and colleges the individual student has mastered a minimum set of reading, writing and math skills, by graduation. State Law now requires these certifications at graduation.

Colleges have also ramped up their entrance requirements by giving graduating high school students a “Compass Test” before they leave school. “The test is given by colleges to see where each students places in math, English and science,” said Wahkiakum High School Principal Loren Davis.

He said the test is being given to students, not just in Wahkiakum County, but across the state that aren’t doing well in math and English.

Davis said that in response to the dip in test scores colleges have implemented a “response intervention project” designed to counter the declining high school scores. To improve student scores. Davis said five Wahkiakum teachers are being sent to learn new teaching techniques that will help the school district design math and English study plans to make students more successful.

At the beginning of the 2009-2010 school years, the high school Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) was replaced by the Student High School Proficiency Exam (HSPE).

“The students will take this test twice,” said Davis. He said eleventh grade students will take the HSPE once in the fall and again in the spring of their senior year. “Having taken it twice and having had any interventions in needed areas of improvement; hopefully the students will be ready for college.”

The HSPE exam measures the proficiency of students during their last two years of high school. The test also serves as the state’s exit exam. Students must pass these assessment exams or a state-approved equivalent in reading and writing to be eligible to graduate.

Davis told school board members, “This year’s exams were meant to be similar to the old WASL, just shorter."

Davis, who is leaving the district at the end of July, said by 2013 students will also have to pass two “end of course” math exams and a science test to graduate.

Students in the classes of 2010-2012 must also pass a reading and writing assessment to be eligible for graduation. If a student has already passed the reading and writing assessment via the WASL they will not have to take the HSPE in that content area.

Students in the Class of 2012 will also be the first required to pass all of the HSPE reading, writing, math and science assessment tests prior to graduation.

The OSPI said HSPE is shorter and will be moved online next year. Online access will make the test easier to give and faster to correct. It will also give students time to do any makeup work.

The HSPE reading, math and science tests will each take one day instead of two, as with the WASL. Writing, for now, will still take two days. And beginning in the spring of 2011, about 25 percent of the state’s students in high school will take the HSPE via computer.

The OSPI says now students can take make up tests or add additional classes, or do swaps with their SAT scores to fulfill the state’s math requirements. Nearly 20 percent of all students use these options, but that changes in the future as well.

The requirements get even tighter for students graduating in 2013 when extra coursework won’t be an alternative to passing the science test. Neither will the class of 2013 have the option of substituting portions of their SAT/HSPE for the state’s new math requirements.