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Here we come a WASLing, among the leaves so green!

This year, the reading/writing portion of the WASL is in the middle of March. The math/science portion lingers until the middle of April, stretching out our joy. I'm thinking last year's exhausting debacle (2 weeks straight!!) got more than a few complaints and more than a few unfilled science tests at the end. The students were sick of testing before the science portion was even handed out.

Basically, this means I'm spending a lot of time rapidly grading extended answers and we haven't even gotten to writing essays yet. If only they could come up with a mechanical essay grader that was halfway decent. At times, I wish we didn't have to do this, but it is an assessment and the graduation requirement at least gives the student enough motivation to take it seriously... I do have an entire period full of the kids who like to draw pictures with their bubble sheet answers.

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