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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Seattle high school says no to state-mandated testing

Leaders opt not to give juniors tests tied to Common Core standards

The Columbian
Published:

SEATTLE (AP) — The leadership team at Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School has decided not to give its juniors the new high school tests tied to the Common Core standards.

That decision has put the school in hot water, The Seattle Times reports. The refusal to give some state-required tests could make the state lose some federal dollars, state schools chief Randy Dorn said.

School leaders decided to skip the new tests because they say their students are already tested enough. The new tests are replacing statewide exams in English and math.

The Nathan Hale leadership team, which the school calls the Senate, is made up of teachers, administrators, parents and students. They voted 24 to 1 to skip the tests.

“It was just too much,” Nathan Hale Senate Chairwoman Melinda Greene said of the amount of testing the students face. “The consensus has just been that this particular class has had enough.”

The Senate argued that because most schools in Washington — including Nathan Hale — will likely be labeled as failing under the federal law that requires the test, taking the exam won’t help them.

Last year, Washington became the first state to lose its waiver from some of the strictest requirements of that law, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, because lawmakers here refused to require school districts to use student test scores as part of evaluating teacher effectiveness.

Seattle Superintendent Larry Nyland has discussed Nathan Hale’s decision with the school’s principal, a district spokesman said.

In a statement, state schools chief Randy Dorn said Nathan Hale’s decision could jeopardize some of the money that Washington state receives from the federal government, though it’s unclear just how much could be at stake. “If a school decides not to follow federal law, it isn’t unreasonable to think that federal money might be withheld,” Dorn said.

This is the first year that 11th-graders must take the new state-required tests.

Just how the new tests will be used is the subject of debate. Dorn, for example, has suggested eliminating the requirement that students must pass the tests in order to earn their high-school diplomas.

As the law stands, the class of 2019 will be the first required to pass the reading and math tests associated with the Common Core tests to graduate.

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