It was all about motivation, incentives, carrots and sticks, spurs, inducements, encouragement and optimism. That was the plan, anyway. Back in the early 1990s it was generally agreed Washington’s public education system needed “reform,” because things were not going as well as they should. It was dumbed down, people said. Mediocrity ruled. We were falling behind.

But how a state government can improve education and raise standards is a tricky thing. Dictates from on high fail. Schools are not run by the state, but local school boards. Curriculum and standards were all over the place. So this became the strategy: Make a list of the things students needed to learn, called “essential learnings.” Make up some tests, to be taken in elementary, middle and high school, to see how well students meet the standards. Give a test in high school — reading, writing, math and science — and require students pass it in order to graduate. Make it tough. That’s motivation. That’s incentive, for students, teachers and administrators. They must improve the curriculum and teaching. They will have to learn. Set the bar high, they said.

They are still talking about setting the bar high, the track-and-field metaphor being popular. They just keep moving it back into the distance. You don’t have to jump yet, they say. Maybe later. The kids today just don’t have the legs.

The bar setters are going wobbly, again. State schools Superintendent Randy Dorn announced last week that he will ask the Legislature to delay, again, the requirement that students pass tests in math and science in order to graduate. First, it was the class of 2008 that was to have to pass the math test to graduate, but when they were sophomores only half could, so they delayed that to 2013 to give us time to get it together. Now even fewer students pass. There’s a new test and new curriculum. So, says Dorn, move the bar back to 2015. Delay the science requirement until 2017, because we’re lousy at that. And Dorn wants “a two-tier bar” for the math requirement. There will be a “proficient” requirement — the high bar — except it won’t be a requirement, really, because you can get over the less-high “basic” bar and still graduate if you take an extra math class. Dorn says he still believes that “We need to set high standards and hold students accountable ...” Someday.

This is an interesting way to hold students accountable, by not holding them accountable. It is an interesting way to set the bar high, by lowering the bar. All the while, says the League of Education Voters, half of Washington students have to take remedial math when they get to college, to learn what they were supposed to in high school. Businesses feverishly complain that too many graduates don’t have the rudimentary skills to be even modestly productive.

It’s human nature. People are less likely to do work they don’t have to do, or learn things the state’s government says they don’t have to know. Back in 1998, when testing first started, scores in all subjects were abysmal. Only half passed the reading test, 40 percent met the writing standard, and only a third could do the math. But scores crept up as the 2008 drop-dead date neared. By the time the class of 2008 were sophomores, more than half passed math. By the time they were seniors, with retests and alternatives, the math passage rate topped 70 percent. It surpassed 90 percent in reading and writing. The science scores were always horrible, because the deadline was always far away. The Wenatchee World checked with local test-givers, who said a lot of students turned in their science test blank. Why bother?

The pressure was too much, and the Legislature pushed back the math requirement to 2013, and passage rates are back down to 45 percent. Dorn says it’s unfair. Push it back, push it back.

Dorn may not get his way. The Legislature may not be as wobbly as he. If setting the bar high is to do any good, eventually we have to get close enough to jump.

Tracy Warner’s column appears Tuesday through Friday. He can be reached at warner@wenworld.com or 665-1163.