Anchor Lead:
In part two of our look at The History of Education in Washington, we go from the battle over funding to the overhaul of what students are taught.

The 1970's and early 80's were dominated by efforts to get the state to put more money into public education.

But while all of that was happening, attention started to shift to how well students were learning. In our series, "The Learning Curve," KPLU's Jennifer Niessen looks at the reform movement, and how it continues to evolve today.

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JN: For any great change to happen in public policy, a number of forces need to line up. Such was the case 20 years ago for Washington's education reform movement. Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Judith Billings recalls at that time businesses were noticing an unsettling trend in its young job applicants.

BILLINGS: "Ok, these kids have spent 12 year in school, diploma in hand, and they fill out an application, and they can't spell, and they don't know how to read a bus schedule."

JN: The business community's fears were confirmed by the controversial report "A Nation at Risk" authored by a commission formed by the Regan Administration. It painted the dire picture of US students lagging far behind their peers in other countries like Japan and Germany.
Then, more than 15-thousand teachers went on strike demanding more resources. They also wanted something to be done about the state's disjointed education system, which gave them little guidance on what to teach. Governor Booth Gardner responded by putting together the Commission on Student Learning.

JN: After lengthy debate on the home floor the legislature adopted the Education Reform Act.
Passed in 1993, the law requires uniformed academic standards. Teachers, business leaders, university professors, all worked together. They debated the learning skills in everything from math to the arts. State Superintendent Terry Bergeson says out of that came Washington's first uniformed standards for public education.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson. Picture courtesy OSPI.

BERGESTON: "And for the first time in the history of the state, parents could get the manual with the essential learnings in it and every school in the state of Washington is required to teach those skills. So at least you know going in the door, well, how do you guys do this? É Your curriculum and your instruction could be different, but my child's gonna learn these skills right?" JN: Now that the standards were in place, there needed to be a way to determine if students were improving. Instead of using tests, Judith Billings envisioned an assessment that focused on a student's progress over time. BILLINGS: "You'd look at the actual work that a child was doing, say, Ohhh, that was the writing that you were doing in September, and it's now July and boy, your sentences are complete and you're punctuating correctly; so you were actually seeing how children were progressing, and somewhere along the way, of course that got hijacked back to the old testing"

JN: In the end, testing was less expensive, and easier for people to comprehend.

In 1996, fourth graders took the first Washington Assessment of Student Learning Exam. It was a test they had never seen before. Essays, complex math problems, and time to explain the thought process behind an answer. Bergeson did not look forward to the first results.

BERGESON: "We couldn't find papers in the first year that kids could do a paragraph. It was pathetic the stuff that we saw year one.

If you looked at the sampling of papers in year one, and this last year and what kids can do in writing, it's startling the difference."

JN: That rate of improvement is not the same for everyone. The more affluent and white a school district is, the better it does on the WASL. Poor districts with large minority populations are struggling.

15 year old Martinez Rice a student at Stadium High School in Tacoma feels many of his peers are falling through the cracks. RICE: "There's people in 10th grade who can't read. I ain't gonna say no names, but there's a lot of people who can't read I know." JN: In 2006, tenth graders will need to pass the test in order to graduate in 2008. Despite the looming deadline, nothing is forcing schools to align their curriculum with the standards that have been in place since 1995. The Tacoma School District is a good example.

Tacoma's Stadium high School. Picture courtesy Tacoma Public Schools.

TOLIFSON: "Kids were graduating from high school with minimal, minimal, maybe the equivalent on one high school semester of math."

JN: Barb Tolifson is a math teacher at Stadium High School.

TOLIFSON: "The nice thing about the WASL is that the WASL has shown that our kids don't have algebra and don't have geometry, and that's why the math scores are so low."

JN: After a controversial debate last year, the district adopted a new basic math program that includes a full year of algebra, a full year of geometry, and some statistics.

As the process of reforming K-12 education unfolds, it becomes clear the missing link is accountability. An Accountability Commission exists, but it has no power. Some of its recommendations include rewarding successful schools and districts with money, and setting up intervention strategies, such as state takeover, for those that lag behind.

Accountability legislation considered "harsh" failed two years ago in Olympia. However, many of the same measures in that bill are included in the federally passed No Child Left Behind Act. The state is still trying to figure out how this new national legislation will affect schools. The impact is expected to be significant.

Jennifer Niessen, KPLU News, Seattle