THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, April 26, 1995              TAG: 9504260015
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A10  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   56 lines

BLUEPRINT FOR SCHOOL REFORM MAKES SENSE BUILDING THE BASIC SCHOOL

For 30 years, school-reform promises have been made and then broken. Grandiose schemes have come to little. Classrooms have been turned into ideological battlefields. Now, a prestigious education organization tries to cut through all the hype and heavy breathing with a common-sense proposal for The Basic School.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching says the elementary school is the place to begin improving education and a few simple, focused changes would produce dramatically better results than the mania for what foundation President Ernest Boyer calls the ``reform of the month.''

Abundant research suggests the following lesson plan should be adopted for the nation's elementary schools.

Schools should be the center of the community where parents and civic leaders collaborate on education and teachers are given substantial authority to run their own classes.

Elementary schools work best for students and best become a community focal point when they are no larger than 500 students and when classes are small.

Indeed, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that the single most important factor in elementary-school success is small class size. That's because it translates into more individualized attention to students. Carnegie recommends classes no larger than 20, but previous studies have suggested the really optimal size is as low as 15 in the earliest grades.

The heart of the curriculum should be language arts. Those skills should be emphasized in all classes because a child who learns to read and write fluently can progress at his own pace through later grades; those students who do not acquire language skills fall further and further behind.

The foundation also recommends flexible class days that link learning in various subjects in preference to rigid lines of demarcation.

Finally, learning should emphasize such core virtues as honesty, respect for others and compassion.

Boyer says these principles can begin to renew education if steadfastly adhered to. He also suggests that such reform needn't be costly. Much can be accomplished simply by throwing away trendy gimmicks.

However, shrinking the size of classes isn't inexpensive. It ought, nevertheless, to be the No. 1 priority. The report also faults schools for not giving elementary teachers adequate time for preparation. And one more recommendation - that every classroom come equipped with TV and videotape player and that there be one computer for every five students - would be costly.

Still, if every elementary school were committed to becoming a center of the community it serves, if classes were small, language arts king, learning across subjects promoted and values instilled, there is little doubt that education would be improved. by CNB