Inflexibility....MAKE HULK MAD!!!

I feel for my friends on the westside, I really do. Here in Spokane we had some snow that never went away, but over there they've gotten dumped on again, and again, and again. The end result is that some school districts are up to two weeks behind, and that's going to impact the WASL. From the Seattle Times:

Area school districts soon will decide how to make up as many as 10 inclement-weather days this year — and whether students need that time in the classroom before the Washington Assessment of Student Learning this spring.

...

The state requires students to attend school for 180 days. Districts make up inclement-weather days by using teacher in-service days, adding days at the end of the school year, or enacting other scheduling changes.

The WASL, however, is locked in.

"It's unfortunate that we've had so many unusually challenging winter-weather days that students have had to miss more school than usual, but the testing window won't be moved," said Molly O'Connor, assessment communications manager for OSPI. The WASL schedule is set several years in advance and planned around religious holidays and other extracurricular activities, such as sports, she said.

State Sen. Jim Clements, R-Selah, on Wednesday proposed a bill that would allow school districts not to have to make up days missed "due to unforeseen natural events or mechanical failures."

Those last two paragraphs strike me as ridiculous, for different reasons. We can work the WASL around the sports schedule (read: state basketball and Springfest), but we can't work around the weather? My guess is that this has everything to do with the amount of time it takes to get the tests scored and returned for AYP-accounting purposes and nothing to do with what's in the best interest of the kids or schools, which is profoundly wrong.

Then there's the idea of not having to make up snow days. This I'm guessing is a matter of parental convenience, because spring break travel plans are usually made far in advance and Johnny's going to go to Mazatlan whether it fits into the school schedule or not, but that still doesn't make it the right thing to do.