Many parents' and teachers' groups have protested against the WASL, claiming unreasonable expectations and unusual questions, and also disputing the fact that even severely learning-disabled students are required to take the test. During the Washington State PTA's 2006 convention the delegates unanimously voted to "oppose any efforts to use a single indicator for making decisions about individual student opportunities such as grade promotion, high school graduation, or entrance into specific educational programs." Instead of a single measure, such as the WASL, Washington State PTA supports multiple measures of student achievement.
Some WASL examinations (including the writing examinations) are graded by human scorers, and the qualifications of these scorers have sometimes been points of contention. WASL examinations were developed and originally graded by practicing teachers, but current test scorers are only required to have a bachelor’s degree and minimal test-grading training. The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is currently only supporting the involvement of Washington educators in the scoring of the Writing section of the WASL. OSPI will no longer be supporting teachers in the scoring of Reading, Math and Science. Additionally, inconsistency in human scorers’ evaluations of answers has undermined the legitimacy of some WASL examinations’ results. The belief that human-generated scores may be inconsistent is further perpetuated by the fact that they (the scorers) are only expected to reach a little more than fifty-five percent agreement on a given score.
Due to the inconsistencies in scoring, educators warn that the WASL examinations are not appropriate for determining grade advancement and high school graduation. Despite these warnings, recent legislation in Washington State has designated the WASL examinations for these purposes.
Due to the wide variation in strand performance schools are unable to use WASL results to identify specific content areas needing improvement.