The primary purpose of math WASL testing is to make sure students meet Washington State's Grade Level Expectations, also called GLEs. These standards were revised in July 2008. For more information on Washington State's new math standards, please visit OSPI's Mathematics page. Since 2001, the WASL exam has also been used to fulfill federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate that schools show adequate yearly progress in math and reading.
In 2000, Washington State added the requirement that high school students pass the WASL in order to receive a diploma, starting with the graduating class of 2008.
When this requirement was added by the state, students were expected to pass the reading, writing, math and science portions of the test to graduate. But in May 2007, Governor Christine Gregoire delayed the math and science requirements to begin with the class of 2013. The following year, in March 2008, Gregoire decided to do away with the math WASL graduation requirement altogether, instead requiring students to pass two end-of-course math exams during high school. This change takes effect with the graduating class of 2014.
As of the 2008 school year, high school students are not required to pass the math WASL in order to receive a diploma, but they must meet other graduation requirements. These include meeting the math standard on the ACT or SAT exam, or earning two high school math credits after 10th grade.
The math WASL includes two types of questions: multiple choice and short response. Students are required to explain how they reached an answer on short response questions by either writing an explanation or drawing pictures that show their thinking processes. This helps prove that students not only have memorized their math facts, but can explain the underlying concepts. For example, an addition problem may ask the student to "show your work using words, numbers or pictures." The student must not only provide the correct answer, but also describe how he determined the answer.
The multiple choice portion of the WASL exam is scored by computer. The short response part of the math WASL is scored by trained evaluators. In order for a student to receive full credit on a question, the answer must be correct and include an adequate explanation of how the student found the answer. Correct responses that do not include the required explanation only get partial credit. Likewise, incorrect answers that nonetheless describe the proper math process receive partial credit.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn, elected in November 2008, has pledged to replace the WASL with shorter exams. Beginning in Spring 2010, students in grades 3-8 will take the Measures of Student Progress (MSP) exam, while high school students will be required to pass the High School Proficiency Exams (HSPE) or meet alternate criteria in order to graduate.