Dear Board Members:

In 2000 the state of Washington passed House Bill 2124 which revises the existing Certificate of Mastery graduation requirement; this requires students to pass the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) to graduate and takes effect in 2008. The WASL was designed to help teachers refine instructional strategies, increase student achievement and provide data on the performance of schools and districts over time. The present events have shown that the WASL is more than that, it's a grading criterion.

If students don't pass the WASL they won't graduate. I read in an article that "Washington state teachers and education specialists developed specific scoring criteria for each subject tested. Specially-trained experts use these criteria to score each student's work."  Isn't that just the opinion of a person? I also read that, "One in every ten...