About 85 percent of this year’s 11th graders scheduled to graduate in 2009 have met state reading and writing standards required for graduation, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson announced last week.

In addition, 75 percent of this year’s 10th graders (members of the Class of 2010) have already passed both the reading and writing portions of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. The majority of the class took the 10th -grade-level tests for the first time this year.

These progress report numbers are based on preliminary results from the 2008 spring round of high school WASL testing. More comprehensive results, including for students in grades 3-8, will be available at the end of August.

The progress of students in future graduating classes comes two weeks after Bergeson announced that 91.4 percent of 12th graders in the Class of 2008 met both reading and writing standards through the WASL or legislatively approved alternative assessments, the first class required to do so in order to graduate.

This year, a record number of ninth graders – more than 21,000 – voluntarily took one or more of three state assessments (reading, writing and math). Preliminary results show that one out of five students in the Class of 2011 has already met both the reading and writing requirement even though most students won’t take the WASL until next spring in the 10th grade.

Because ninth graders who took the spring WASL received their preliminary scores in June this year for the first time, they are eligible now to take the August WASL. Ninth graders must have been in school during the spring WASL administration to be eligible to register.