ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 4, 1996 TAG: 9601050010
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN B. FLEMING
NOW THAT the dust has settled from recent elections, state lawmakers must come to grips with the controversial issues involved in proposed educational reform in Virginia. We now have newly adopted Standards of Learning by the State Board of Education and the governor's proposals for local school accountability based on these new standards. As a result, several vital questions must be answered soon.
The overriding issue is whether to have increased state control over local schools through accountability based on mandatory state tests that determine whether schools pass or fail. To carry out this dramatic shift in state policy will certainly require an expanded state bureaucracy to develop and maintain such a program.
Yet to be developed is how to determine if a school division passes or fails. And if it fails, what happens next? If the state provides remediation services for failing schools, as has been proposed, how will this be done and who pays for such services? If failing schools are to be punished by receiving less money, will this motivate them to improve or further accelerate their decline?
A second related issue is that of funding. The Virginia Department of Education is requesting $25 million for tests to assess the new standards, but is requesting very little funding for teacher retraining and new classroom materials to implement revised programs. In some cases, no materials exist. This will require creating new instructional materials. Does anyone doubt which school divisions will do well or poorly on these new tests? Decades of standardized testing already have identified clear patterns of localities with problems. Will these additional tests reveal anything that we don't already know? Will all these efforts only return us again to the equity-funding issues we already have?
A third issue concerns the actual quality of the new Standards of Learning. Are they ready to be used as the basis for school accountability? In one case, that of the History and Social Science Standards, the answer is no. While these new standards made some substantial improvements over the previous ones, they need further work before they are suitable for use.
The new History and Social Science Standards have strengths and weaknesses. They are more logically organized than the previous SOLs, offering a two-year sequence in U.S. history and a two-year sequence in world history. They have added history to the primary grades, a strong economics thrust throughout the program, and a year of world geography.
On the negative side, partially due to the great haste in writing them, they lack consistency in organization within grade levels and, like previous SOLs, often lack clarity. They also have errors of omission in content, and confusion in content placement. Unfortunately, they reflect the disjointed and hurried work of several committees with little communication among the groups.
Probably the greatest bone of contention in the new History and Social Sciences Standards is that of appropriateness for student levels. For example, students in the second grade are to ``compare different ways that money can increase in value through savings and investments (e.g., bank savings accounts, investments in stocks and bonds, and investments in real estate and other valuable goods).'' In grade six, students are to ``describe U.S. foreign policy since World War II concerning nuclear weapons and the arms race.'' In grade seven, students are to ``compare the American political and economic system to systems of other nations, including Japan, China and leading European nations.'' These seem quite unrealistic for most pupils at grades two, six and seven. One must ask at what point does rigor really turn into impossible expectations. Too many of the SOLs are student-level inappropriate.
Despite the improvements cited earlier, the new History and Social Sciences SOLs don't stand up well under close scrutiny, and need further refining before they could serve as a legitimate basis for local school accountability. Many flaws in the standards could have been avoided if teacher input had been sought and time for reflection had been allowed, but such wasn't the case.
If the General Assembly decides to go the centralized state-control route and expand the bureaucracy needed there to enforce such state control, there are good arguments for doing this. (This centralization does seem to contradict much of Gov. Allen's stated views from the past.) What shouldn't be done is to increase demands on local schools without increasing their funding to meet stiffer requirements. The old saying, ``He who calls the tune pays the piper,'' should apply to the state government in this effort at education reform. If not, then all of this will become a great unfunded mandate.
Everyone I know supports higher quality standards for our children, and that isn't the issue. What we must decide is how it's to be done and what it will cost. If we truly want educational reform in Virginia, it won't be done with political slogans and posturing. Just creating and testing new SOLs isn't magical elixir to produce better schools. That's the easy part of real reform. Now that elections are over, the public should demand answers from state leaders to these questions I've raised.
Dan B. Fleming is a retired professor of social-studies education at Virginia Tech.
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