WEST-B Washington Educator Skills Test-Basic
WEST-B Washington Educator Skills Test-Basic is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
WEST-B Washington Educator Skills Test-Basic is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
10 sample questions for the WEST-B Washington Educator Skills Test-Basic, with the correct answer and an explanation for each. No account needed. Try each one before you open the answer.
Sections covered on the exam: Reading: Main Ideas, Details and Relationships Among Ideas, Writing: Audience, Purpose, Organization and Development, Mathematics.
Question 1 · Reading: Main Ideas, Details and Relationships Among Ideas
City planners have long treated street trees as decoration, something to add once the serious work of roads and pipes is finished. A growing body of measurement suggests that view has it backward. On a hot summer afternoon, a paved block with no shade can be several degrees warmer than a nearby block lined with mature trees, and the difference persists after sunset because asphalt and brick release stored heat through the night.
The consequences are not merely a matter of comfort. Hospital admissions for heat-related illness climb sharply during prolonged hot spells, and the neighborhoods with the thinnest canopy are often those where fewer households own air conditioners. Shade also shortens the hours that cooling systems must run, which lowers electricity demand at exactly the moment the power grid is most strained.
Trees are not a quick fix. A sapling planted today will not cast meaningful shade for a decade or more, and young trees die at high rates when no one waters them through their first dry summers. Cities that have expanded their canopy successfully have paired planting with maintenance budgets and with residents who agree to care for the trees outside their doors.
The lesson is that a tree is less like a lamp post, installed once and forgotten, than like a public program that must be funded year after year.
Answer: B. Street trees bring health and energy benefits, so cities should fund them as ongoing programs.
The passage argues that trees are not decoration: they reduce heat illness and electricity demand, but they need years of care, so they resemble a public program that must be funded every year. The point about asphalt and brick is only a supporting detail, and the passage never recommends cooling centers or an end to planting saplings.
Question 2 · Reading: Main Ideas, Details and Relationships Among Ideas
The following announcement was drafted by a school's reading specialist for the families of incoming kindergarten students, many of whom will be visiting the school for the first time.
Kindergarten Literacy Night will take place on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. in the school library. (1) Families will learn simple games that help children hear the separate sounds in spoken words. (2) Our program employs a systematic, explicit scope and sequence targeting phonemic awareness and grapheme-phoneme correspondence. (3) Each family will take home a free bag of picture books chosen by our librarians. (4) Child care will be provided for younger siblings in the gym, and light snacks will be served. Please let your child's teacher know by Monday if you plan to attend.
The reading specialist has asked a colleague to review the announcement before it is sent home in students' folders, because she wants every family to feel welcome and to understand exactly what the evening will offer.
Answer: A. Our lessons teach children, step by step, how letters stand for the sounds in words.
Families of new kindergartners need plain language, and the revision that says children learn step by step how letters stand for sounds keeps the meaning without jargon. The version with grapheme-phoneme terms is still technical, the boast changes the content, and the slang version is too casual for a school notice.
Question 3 · Writing: Audience, Purpose, Organization and Development
A resident is writing a formal letter to the city transportation committee about a dangerous intersection.
(1) The intersection of Fifth Avenue and Alder Street has no crosswalk, even though it sits between an elementary school and a public park. (2) In the past six months, the police department has recorded three collisions involving pedestrians at that corner. (3) Each weekday afternoon, dozens of children cross there on their way to the park.
Answer: D. I respectfully ask the committee to approve a marked crosswalk and signal at this intersection.
A formal letter to a committee should end with a courteous, specific request, and the crosswalk-and-signal sentence does exactly that. The wake-up sentence is rude and informal, the playground detail drifts from the safety issue, and the at-some-point sentence is too vague to prompt action.
Question 4 · Writing: Audience, Purpose, Organization and Development
Answer: C. The award for outstanding service was shared by Ms. Lee and me.
Me is correct because it is the object of the preposition by. Between takes the object form me rather than I, Her and Dana needs the subject form She, and whoever should be whomever because it is the object of trusted in its clause.
Question 5 · Mathematics
Answer: B. 8 feet
At first the top is sqrt(625 - 49) = sqrt(576) = 24 feet high, so after sliding it is 20 feet high. The new base distance is sqrt(625 - 400) = sqrt(225) = 15 feet, which is the new distance, not the movement. The base moves 15 - 7 = 8 feet.
Question 6 · Reading: Main Ideas, Details and Relationships Among Ideas
In many rural districts, principals begin each August with a list of teaching positions they could not fill. Job postings attract few applicants, and teachers recruited from cities often leave after a year or two, citing isolation and the distance from family. Signing bonuses have helped for a season but rarely for longer.
A growing number of these districts have concluded that the most reliable future teachers are people they already employ: the paraeducators, bus drivers, and office staff who live in the community and know its students. Through grow-your-own programs, districts partner with colleges to let these employees earn teaching credentials while continuing to work, often with tuition paid in exchange for a promise to teach locally for several years.
Early results are encouraging. Graduates of such programs stay in their districts at higher rates than teachers hired from outside, and many are bilingual or share the backgrounds of the students they teach. The programs are not cheap, and they take years to produce a single certified teacher, but for districts that have tried everything else, they offer something signing bonuses cannot: teachers who already think of the town as home.
Answer: B. Rural districts are easing teacher shortages by training local employees, who tend to stay.
The passage describes a shortage, presents grow-your-own programs as the solution districts are turning to, and reports that graduates stay at higher rates. The point about city recruits leaving is one supporting detail, the passage says bonuses rarely work for long, and it never claims paraeducators are better teachers than other graduates.
Question 7 · Reading: Main Ideas, Details and Relationships Among Ideas
When Lena Haugland applied to the state's engineering college, the admissions office returned her application unopened, with a note explaining that the program did not accept women. She enrolled instead in the mathematics department, the only one that would take her, and asked engineering professors whether she could sit in on their lectures. Most refused. One agreed, on the condition that she sit in the back row and never ask questions.
She asked none in class and dozens in his office afterward. By her third year, the professor was sending other students to her for help with structural calculations. When she graduated with a mathematics degree, no engineering firm would hire her, so she took a job as a draftsman's assistant, tracing other people's bridge designs for a third of a junior engineer's pay.
Over the next eight years she taught herself the state's building codes, passed the licensing examination on her second attempt, and opened a small firm that designed footbridges for county parks. Several of those bridges still carry hikers across mountain streams.
Answer: D. recount how a woman overcame barriers to build a career in engineering.
The passage follows Haugland from her rejected application through low-paid work and a second licensing attempt to her own firm, so it tells the story of how she overcame obstacles. It does not explain bridge design, argue for an admissions policy, or compare two fields of study.
Question 8 · Writing: Audience, Purpose, Organization and Development
The following paragraph is from a proposal urging a company to offer a four-day workweek.
(1) Imagine finally having time for your family, your hobbies, and yourself. (2) Isn't it time our company joined the future of work? (3) In a six-month trial at our Spokane office, employees on a four-day schedule completed 6 percent more projects while sick days fell by a third. (4) Our competitors will leave us in the dust if we refuse to change.
Answer: D. Sentence 3
Sentence 3 reports measurable results from a trial, giving readers data to reason from. Sentence 1 appeals to personal desires, sentence 2 is a rhetorical question, and sentence 4 appeals to fear of falling behind without evidence.
Question 9 · Writing: Audience, Purpose, Organization and Development
The following paragraph is from a workplace email.
(1) The training team has finished revising the safety manual. (2) When Maria met with her supervisor on Thursday, she said that the manual would be ready by the end of the month. (3) The revised manual includes a new section on lifting heavy equipment. (4) All employees should read the new section before their next shift.
Answer: B. Sentence 2
In sentence 2, she could refer to either Maria or her supervisor, so the reader cannot tell who made the statement. The pronoun her in that sentence clearly refers to Maria, and their in sentence 4 clearly refers to all employees.
Question 10 · Mathematics
Answer: C. 10
Moving from A to M changes x by 4 and y by -3, so B is another such step from M, at (5, -2). The length of AM is 5, which is only half the segment, and adding the changes 8 + 6 gives 14 instead of using the Pythagorean theorem. AB = sqrt(8^2 + 6^2) = sqrt(100) = 10.
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