By spring 2010, the WASL will be no more.

Newly sworn-in State Superintendent Randy Dorn announced the change on Wednesday.

“I was elected on a promise to replace the WASL with a fairer, less expensive system of measuring student learning. This announcement today affirms my intention to do what’s right for our kids and our schools and to deliver on that promise as quickly as is possible,” Dorn said in a press release.

Dorn was sworn in on Jan. 13.

The Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) will be replaced with two new tests: The Measurements of Student Progress in grades 3-8 and the High School Proficiency Exams.

The new tests will be shorter, require fewer written responses, have a faster turnaround in results, and cost the state less money.

The tests could be all computerized by 2012, which would also save time and money.

Currently, every student in the state takes the WASL at several grade levels. Students are required to pass the 10th grade WASL to graduate high school.

Schools are also graded for the No Child Left Behind Act based on their WASL scores. There are several “cells” that a school must pass. Each ethnicity group as well as each learning group, for example special education, mainstream and English as a second language, must each pass the reading and math sections of the WASL.

If a school fails the same category two years in a row, the school is no longer considered to be making Adequate Yearly Progress and can lose funding.

Federal Way as a district is currently “in improvement,” meaning it did not make AYP for the past two years.

Federal Way School District officials declined to comment at this time.