THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100320
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 74 lines
OK, Virginia Board of Education. Clear your desks, take out two sharpened No. 2 pencils, open to the first page of your choosing-a-consultant booklet, and pick the creator of the state's new batch of standardized tests.
That's today's mission for the board, which is meeting at 4 p.m. in special session in Richmond, in House Room 4 of the State Capitol.
The consultant the board hires will develop the new statewide written examinations which will be given in grades three, five, eight and 11 beginning this coming spring. The tests are intended to determine how well Virginia's 1.1 million students and 1,700 public schools are performing under new, tougher academic standards, the state's revised ``Standards of Learning'' adopted in 1995.
``If you don't have good, valid, solid information on how schools and students are doing, then you don't have a way of holding them accountable,'' said Margaret N. Roberts, director of community relations for the state Department of Education.
``The difference in the testing on our own standards, is these are our standards'' and not national norms, added Michelle Easton, president of the Board of Education. ``You can look, for example, at fifth-grade history, and you know that's what it's going to be on.''
The board will meet privately today to consider a review-committee's recommendations, and afterward publicly announce any decision. Whoever wins the bid will have to hustle to get the two-part Virginia Assessment System, as it will be called, ready by this spring.
One part, a nationally standardized or ``norm-referenced'' test, will replace the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, familiar to the state's fourth- and eighth-graders for more than a decade, and the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency given to high-school juniors.
``What that says is how Virginia's students are doing measured against their peers across the nation,'' Easton said.
The second and larger part will be a ``criterion-referenced'' test measuring how well Virginia students are meeting the new standards in English, math, science and history and social science. Ultimately it will determine whether they're allowed to graduate from high school.
The first run of the assessment test measuring how well students are mastering the new content-based state standards will be a ``dry run,'' with the scores being used only to validate the test - ``a test of the test,'' Roberts said. The scores will start going on students' records in the spring of 1998.
State education officials declined to say much about the proposals for the new tests, citing the confidentiality of the bidding process.
Requests for bids were ``sent far and wide,'' Roberts said. The General Assembly this year budgeted up to $12 million for the first two years of developing and administering the tests, and the contract will run a total of six years, through the 2001-2002 school year.
The bid request for the Virginia-standards part of the assessment called for single tests for the four core subjects for grades three and five, plus a separate technology test for grade five. For grade eight, there should be one test for the core subjects, plus a separate writing and editing test. For grade 11, the tests are to include separate exams for writing and non-writing English, algebra, geometry, earth science, biology, world history and world geography.
The new tests also will reflect the heavier emphasis on content or facts included in the new state-education standards, Easton said. ``This is one of the key components for our plan for reform,'' the board president said.
For example, the old third-grade social studies standard focused on learning about students' communities, the interdependence of people and groups, and map and calendar skills. Objectives included ``the student will demonstrate courtesy in social interactions'' and ``the student will recognize the shape of the United States and Virginia, and that most other states have distinctive shapes.''
In contrast, the new third-grade history-and-social-science standard starts out by requiring students to ``explain the term `civilization' and describe the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, in terms of geographic features, government, agriculture, architecture, music, art, religion, sports, and roles of men, women, and children.'' by CNB