H-1862              _______________________________________________

                                           SUBSTITUTE HOUSE BILL NO. 141

                        _______________________________________________

State of Washington                              49th Legislature                              1985 Regular Session

By House Committee on Education (originally sponsored by Representatives Ebersole, Betrozoff, Cole, Holland, Valle, Schoon, Walker, Long, Hastings, P. King, Tanner, Isaacson, van Dyke, Dobbs, May and Crane; by Superintendent of Public Instruction request)

Read first time 2/11/85 and passed to Committee on Rules.

AN ACT Relating to the tenth grade achievement test; and amending RCW 28A.03.360.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

        Sec. 1.  Section 1, chapter 98, Laws of 1975-'76 2nd ex. sess. as amended by section 8, chapter 278, Laws of 1984 and RCW 28A.03.360 are each amended to read as follows:

          (1) Every school district is encouraged to test pupils in grade two  by an assessment device designed or selected by the local school districts.  This test shall be used to help teachers in identifying those pupils in need of assistance in the skills of reading, writing, mathematics, and language arts.  The test results are not to be compiled by the superintendent of public instruction, but are only to be used by the local school district.

          (2) The superintendent of public instruction shall prepare and conduct, with the assistance of local school districts, a standardized achievement test to be given annually to all pupils in grade four.  The test shall assess students' skill in reading, mathematics, and language arts and shall focus upon appropriate input variables.  Results of such tests shall be compiled by the superintendent of public instruction, who shall make those results available annually to the legislature, to all local school districts and subsequently to parents of those children tested.  The results shall allow parents to ascertain the achievement levels and input variables of their children as compared with the other students within the district, the state and, if applicable, the nation.

          (3) The superintendent of public instruction shall prepare and conduct, with the assistance of local school districts, an assessment to be administered annually to all grade eight students.  The purposes of the assessment are to assist students, parents, and teachers in the planning and selection of appropriate high school programs and courses for the students and to provide comparisons within the district, the state and, if applicable, the nation.  The assessment shall include but not be limited to tests in reading, mathematics, and language arts and a student interest inventory.  The superintendent of public instruction shall make the results available to all local school districts which shall in turn make them available to students, parents, and teachers in a timely fashion.

          (4) The superintendent of public instruction shall prepare and conduct, with the assistance of local school districts, a standardized achievement test to be given annually to all students in grade ten.  The test shall include, but not be limited to, the assessment of students' skills in reading, language, and mathematics and may include the collection of other achievement-related information.  Results of the assessment shall be compiled by the superintendent of public instruction, who shall make the results available annually to the legislature, to all local school districts, and subsequently to the parents of those students tested.  The results shall allow schools and parents to ascertain the achievement levels of their students as compared with other students within the district, the state, and if applicable, the nation and diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of individual students and aid in the development of a plan to address individual weaknesses.

(5) The superintendent of public instruction shall test approximately two thousand students distributed throughout the state in the eleventh grade once every two years.  Choice of students shall be based on a statistical random sample of students from this grade level sufficient to generalize about all of the students at the grade level from the state's school districts.  The purpose of the test is to allow the public, the legislature, and school district personnel to evaluate how Washington students in this grade compare to students in the same grade tested in other comparable national achievement surveys.

           (((5))) (6) The superintendent of public instruction shall report annually to the legislature on the achievement levels of students in grades four ((and)), eight, and ten and shall report biennially to the legislature on the achievement levels of students in grade eleven.