
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 27, 1995                   TAG: 9503270028
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PUTTING SCHOOLS TO THE TEST

SOME SCHOOL districts in Southwest Virginia have improved their statistics in areas crucial to preparing noncollege-bound graduates for the job market. That progress deserves to be lauded.

Roanoke city's schools, in particular, can be proud that for the 1993-94 school year, 71 percent of its seniors who had no plans for continuing their education had completed a vocational program.

This might seem like no great accomplishment - with almost one-third of these students not completing vocational training, the district just meets the state average and it is far shy of Bedford County's 94 percent. But 71 percent was a leap for the city's schools, where that figure was a dismal 45 percent the previous school year. Such an upward trend is just what school officials, taxpayers and parents hope to see in the 46 performance indicators included in Virginia's Outcome Accountability Project, now in its fifth year.

The number of measures tracked by school districts should help them identify areas in need of change and recognize succesful methods that might be duplicated. But such "report cards" are complex: Conclusions about whether a school district is improving or declining are not as easily drawn as when more simplistic gauges, such as average SAT scores for college-bound graduates, are used.

Schools might be getting better - or worse, depending on which of seven identified objectives is most important to the person making the judgment. Or depending, even, on which indicator of progress toward that objective is considered.

In Roanoke, where the business, technical and vocational curriculum has been upgraded and emphasized, more high-school graduates heading straight into the work force now have some kind of vocational training. But other indicators under the objective of "preparing students for work" don't show similar progress.

Only 67 percent of 11th-graders last year scored above the national 25th percentile in basic reading skills, for example, compared to 70 percent the year before. Just 64 percent did that well on basic math skills, compared to 70 percent in 1992-93.

Fairly small, one-year dips are less bothersome, however, than the fact that the numbers in both areas have hovered in the high-60, low-70 percent range all four years for which data has been reported. Over time, these figures ought to be nudged upward.

The goal, of course, is for all measures to improve steadily. Statewide, students have improved on 27 of the 46 indicators. That's progress. But on the other 19 - including such key areas as basic reading and math skills and performance on nationally standardized tests - there has been little improvement.

Outcome accountability looks like a good tool for pinpointing gaps in our children's education. The genius, though, will be in figuring out how to plug those gaps, and then doing so.

by CNB