THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996                 TAG: 9605180307
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   33 lines

DARE 7TH-GRADERS AMONG BEST IN WRITING TEST

Dare County Schools' seventh-grade writing test scores are among the highest in the state, Superintendent Leon Holleman said Friday.

Slightly more than 89 percent of the district's seventh graders got ``proficient'' marks on the statewide test by earning a 2.5 or higher on a four-point scale, he said.

Fourth-graders scored 54.6 percent proficient, above the state average of 51.5, but below last year's 61 percent district score, Holleman said.

``We feel like that at fourth grade we've still got a little work to do,'' Holleman said. ``With our seventh grade, I'm absolutely delighted.''

Gates County Schools reported some of its best and worst scores on this year's writing test.

Sixty-three percent of Gates' fourth-graders had proficient scores. ``We've never done anywhere near that good before,'' testing director Michael Conner said. Last year, 53.5 percent of fourth-graders tested proficiently, he said.

But Gates seventh-graders, tested at that grade level for the first time, fared worse. Only about one in four seventh-graders received proficient scores - one of the worst results the system has had, Conner said.

More than half the district's eighth-graders were proficient on the test last year. Conner said that in small systems such as Gates, grade levels can produce sharply different sets of scores from year to year. by CNB