Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 29, 1990 TAG: 9006290697
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The city has one of the largest economically disadvantaged student populations of any school division in Virginia, as defined by the number of pupils who qualify for federally subsidized lunches. Nearly half its kids come from poor homes - long recognized as a driving factor in low test scores. That's up dramatically from only 15 percent in 1981.
Yet the city is doing a better than average job of teaching youngsters - when compared with 33 other school districts in Virginia that also deal with large numbers of disadvantaged pupils.
It is, in fact, competing well with school districts that have only about 22 percent economically disadvantaged kids.
Nonetheless, publication of city students' scores on the new Virginia Literary Passport exam will surely occasion comparison, as past test results have, with scores in 11 nearby school divisions - most notably Roanoke County and Salem.
Within the Roanoke Valley, the county and Salem won the bragging rights, hands down. Seventy-five percent of the county's sixth-graders passed the exam - 10 percentage points higher than the state average (65 percent). Salem youngsters also did better than the state average, with nearly 70 percent passing the test.
In contrast, Roanoke City's overall score of 54.8 percent looks dismally lower than the county's and Salem's - as well as the state's.
Undoubtedly, some county residents - basing their opposition to the proposed merger of city and county governments on the fear that their children's education may suffer - will cite the area-wide numbers as fresh evidence that county schools will go to pot if the systems are combined. In fact, the exam results offer no such evidence.
Statewide test results are a helpful indicator of trends and problems that need remedial action. They also provide a dimension of accountability to the public - which is footing the bills for reform efforts and teachers' and administrators' salaries and deserves to know what it's getting for its money.
Significant and fair comparisons of schools, however, only can be made "apples to apples." In this case, that means looking at how the city stacks up alongside those - mostly other urban school districts - that struggle to educate kids with similar socioeconomic backgrounds.
And in that cast, Roanoke City - which trails only Richmond and Norfolk in percentages of disadvantages pupils - is doing a commendable job.
by CNB