THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 19, 1996 TAG: 9603190308
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
If school officials learned anything from a 90-minute live cable television broadcast they produced Monday night, it's that parents are interested in what schools are doing.
A panel of educators and business people fielded more than 30 questions phoned in by parents who wanted to know more about the district's new promotion policy and the state's new plan to hold schools accountable for teaching.
Both plans are taking effect within months, and both promise to dramatically change the way students are evaluated and moved through school.
Together, Superintendent Joe Peel said after the forum, the policies will ensure that everyone is accountable for education, from parents and students to teachers to administrators. And no one can afford to be left out.
``Everyone has to survive by working together,'' Peel said. ``We've got to educate all of the kids, and it's the first time we've ever had to do that.''
Under the state's ``New ABCs of Public Education,'' schools will be required to show that groups of students in grades 3 through 8 stay, on average, at grade level from year to year. Schools that do not will get help from the state, whether they want it or not.
Under the district's new ``promotion and intervention'' policy, individual students who don't meet standards entering the key grades of fourth, seventh and ninth will get help from the school system in the form of four intensive weeks of summer school.
The plan, Peel said, should change the way parents and students think about moving children through school. It should make them think less about getting out of one grade, and more about how to get into the next one.
Eventually, he said, students will say not `` `we're ready to get out' or `we're ready to be promoted,' but `are we ready for the real world?' ''
Concerns of the parents who called in ranged from how to control their children's anxiety about newly important end-of-grade tests to whether the school system has enough money to pay for more than half of its rising fourth, seventh and ninth graders to go to summer school.
Rita Collie, district testing and accountability director, said she has worked with every school on techniques for taking tests. And administrators have guessed that summer school this year may cost around $250,000, but they say the money should be available.
One parent asked how the New ABCs compared with the state's last major program, Outcome Based Education, which had originally been funded for five years but was cut off early. The parent wondered whether the new ABCs also would be replaced before it took hold.
Peel, whose district had been a successful pilot of the OBE plan, said the concern was legitimate.
``The reality of public education is that it occurs in the political arena,'' Peel said. ``I don't think anyone in the state of North Carolina can tell you that there won't be another reform program two years from now.''
Panelist David Harris, of J.W. Jones Lumber Co., helped emphasize the importance of students meeting standards in a more competitive world.
``We're moving quickly into higher technology,'' Harris said. ``The skill and ability level of the worker we hire now, compared to the past, has gotten greater.''
Time ran out before officials could answer three of the questions. Panelists said they would respond to those personally and encouraged parents with other questions to call their children's schools or the central office at 335-2981. by CNB