Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Members of Allen's Champion Schools Commission also have longtime connections to Republican politics, according to a story published Tuesday in The Washington Post.
One panelist, Sylvia Kraemer of Alexandria, wrote a memo to other members last year blasting Virginia teachers for advocating a ``one-world ideology'' and environmental ``platitudes'' best left for ``Young Democrats club meetings.''
Kraemer, a NASA employee and former college history professor, has withdrawn her two children from public schools.
The panel's leader, state education board member Lillian Tuttle, is a suburban Richmond activist whose group, Academics First, fought former Gov. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, over an education program she considered too ``touchy-feely.''
Appointee I. David Wheat Jr. is a Southwest Virginia government teacher and education consultant who worked as a White House aide to Presidents Nixon and Ford and quotes the writings and ideas of conservative education theorists Lynne Cheney, E.D. Hirsch and William Bennett.
History teacher Robert Lee Ware, another appointee, is a Republican member of the Powhatan County Board of Supervisors.
Critics say the panel's proposals would ``dumb down'' public school curriculum and emphasize rote memorization. They also allege some history sections are faulty. One would identify early African-Americans as settlers, not slaves.
Nearly two dozen school superintendents and groups of English and social studies teachers have attacked the proposals.
But commission members say their recommendations should be graded on their merit, not the members' ideologies.
``What we're looking for is higher standards. Does it really matter who did it?'' said Tuttle, 47, whose two children attend public schools. ``No one who didn't care about public schools would be spending all this time trying to improve it.''
Commission members were asked to review grade-by-grade guidelines drafted by four urban and suburban school districts on what students should learn in math, English, social studies and science.
The process began last year and included hundreds of teachers and administrators. Commission members got involved in the fall and called for a major rewriting of the English and social studies sections, which they said were abstract and unmeasurable.
The state education board has delayed a vote on the commission's recommendations until at least May to allow for changes.
Commission members deny politics had a role in their recommendations. Wheat, who was Botetourt County's teacher of the year in 1990, accused opponents of ``suggesting some kind of conspiracy theory ... But there was no political input whatsoever from the governor's office.''
Some in Allen's own party blame the controversy on ideology, though. The governor should not have assigned the standards to ``people with a very definite political bias to the right,'' said Del. James Dillard, R- Fairfax. ``That is a very, very dangerous precedent.''
by CNB