Assessments a frustrating exercise for ELLs in Seattle

He could rail against the unfairness of it all, but Robinsson Franco is resigned. The 18-year-old Honduran immigrant is among the hundreds of Seattle, Washington, public high school students taking the reading and writing WASL tests this week, even though he puts his chances of passing the 10th-grade tests this year at slim to none. “I feel a little bit scared,” he admits. “But we have to try, you know?”

The Washington Assessment of Student Learning tests have become a frustrating annual exercise for both students and educators at Franco’s school, the Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center in Queen Anne. The 263 teenage students there are all recent immigrants and refugees who don’t yet speak or read well enough in English to transfer to one of Seattle Public Schools’ traditional middle or high schools—meaning that even if they understand the material covered on a section of the WASL, there’s still virtually no way they’ll pass. Read about their plight in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer online.