THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 1, 1995 TAG: 9508010007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Virginia education officials are disappointed because 80,000-plus sixth graders who took the Literacy Passport test in the spring did markedly worse than did the previous year's sixth graders. So are we.
The percentage passing all three test sections and earning their high school wings on the first try dropped from 70.4 percent to 65.6 in one year. So the Department of Education should try to pinpoint the reasons and take steps to help send results in a more promising direction.
Local school districts obviously should continue pushing for educational techniques and approaches that will reach problem children; those, for example, who lack parental encouragement to hit the books but face plenty of peer pressure to reject learning.
This much said, the Literacy Passport and traditional standardized tests don't serve the same function and hence shouldn't be viewed in the same way.
The main purpose is not that of the other tests. When the Governor's Commission on Excellence in Education advanced the Literacy Passport idea in 1986, the first year of the Baliles administration, the panel said possession of the passport ``affirms that the student is prepared for success at the more demanding level of secondary education.''
Almost two-thirds of those who took the test this year qualified for high school in the three basic subject areas - reading, writing and math - more than two years before they will reach that level. Also, some, perhaps many, who did not qualify failed in one category only.
Finally, whether a sixth grader failed one, two or all three parts, he or she can try again (fall and spring) in the seventh grade and, if necessary, the eighth. And the pupil can be given special help in the weak area or areas of study.
Firm figures on the percentage of pupils who gain passports by the end of the eighth grade aren't immediately available. (The State Board of Education has asked state department researchers to compile them.) But using numbers already in hand, one can make a credible surmise that more than 90 percent of this past year's eighth graders will enter high school a few weeks hence with their passports in hand.
And the other 10 percent or less - those in the ``ungraded student'' limbo - will be afforded additional opportunities to remove this barrier to a standard high-school diploma.
This is what the Literacy Passport is supposed to do. And this is the basis on which its effectiveness should be judged. by CNB