School has started for most K-12 students in the state. This year they will confront a major barrier that can close off educational and economic opportunity for many of them.

That’s because the WASL test for 10th grade becomes the door for a certificate of academic achievement. If you pass the WASL, you can graduate from high school. If you fail, you don’t get that graduate diploma. It is as simple and as harsh as that.

Either this can help catalyze our students to achieve more, or it can traumatize and divide our students from each other, with some internalizing defeat, dropping out or making do with a GED, others moving forward through high school and the top segment going on to college and the educational and economic aspirations that come with a college degree.

The answer isn’t to take apart our schools, as the No Child Left Behind Act, or, as some would say, “Leave a Whole Lot of Children Behind Law,” is designed to do. The real issue is the lack of robust funding for public schools.

The Legislature needs to do more than just reinstate initiatives 728 and 732. One quality education model details the need for almost $2 billion more in funding for K-12 education if we are to open up doors for the vast majority of our children. We can’t be content with a slim majority of achievers. Public education that creates opportunity for all is the foundation of a robust democracy.

If the WASL had been the gatekeeper in the 2004-2005 year, more than half of students would be left without a high school degree. That’s because only 47 percent of 10th-graders statewide passed the math test. If the competence expected was limited to writing, still 35 percent of students in our state and 46 percent of Tacoma’s students would be missing a high school diploma. Either way, it is not acceptable.

This doesn’t mean that students aren’t making progress. In fact, each year the percent of students who pass the WASL increases. But with more of a stick than a carrot approach, many students will be left behind under the new rules.

For example, the No Child Left Behind Act includes a provision for adequate yearly progress. Sounds good, but in fact, it can be used to undermine progress in the public schools. Say the number of fourth-grade students passing the WASL increases by 9 percent in one school. If that percent is still below the established goal for all fourth-graders, that school will be sanctioned.

If this improvement continues at the same rate for several years, even then the school will eventually have to choose between replacing all or most of its staff, contracting with an outside entity to operate the school, or being taken over by the state. So much for local control and the incentive to improve.

Add to this the impossible expectation that by the 2013-2014 school year 100 percent of students, including special-education students, will be expected to pass the WASL, and you will see a system coming apart, thanks to a yardstick approach that is not based in educational excellence, but just meter reading.

There are some crucial things to do to enable our children to learn. We should lower class size for elementary school to 20 kids per teacher. We should institute all-day kindergarten. We should decrease the pupil-teacher ratio from 30:1 to 18:1 for special-ed kids.

We all know that teachers make the crucial difference in opening the doors of education for our children. And yet, we’re willing to stiff them. The starting salary of a teacher in the Peninsula School District last year was $32,804. That’s almost $5,000 below the median annual wage of $37,410 in the Tacoma metropolitan area and $11,000 less that the basic family budget, with no luxuries, for a family of two adults and two children.

So while our kids are going back to school, we as a people have to go back to school and figure out how we are going to invest in our children, our schools and our teachers so that they have the tools to succeed.

This will take more than rhetoric about “No Child Left Behind.” This will take money – that is, taxes. So let’s figure out how to do this equitably and in a manner our kids can depend on. We can’t sell ourselves short.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.