
DATE: Friday, October 10, 1997              TAG: 9710100995

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LEDYARD KING, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   91 lines

HOW TO IMPROVE SCHOOLS? PANEL GIVES ITS IDEAS

Maybe Virginia's public schools would improve if the youngest students had more time in class, if teachers were better-trained to deliver their lessons imaginatively, and if administrators of low-performing schools had to lay out publicly the corrective steps they planned to take.

An influential and politically varied committee of lawmakers, educators and business leaders thinks those are just some avenues to explore when it comes to upgrading public education.

A year and a half after it was formed by an act of the General Assembly, the Virginia Commission on the Future of Public Education released and debated its first draft report, suggesting 36 ways to improve the state's 135 school systems.

Some, like improved teacher training and licensing standards, earned bipartisan support among commission members. Others, such as determining the flexibility local school boards should have to hold back failing students, emerged with no clear consensus on a panel that features not only Democrats and Republicans, but also representatives from the Virginia Education Association and The Family Foundation.

Still other recommendations, namely barring drop-outs under 18 from obtaining driver's licenses, have been floated through - and killed by - the legislature in past years.

The commission still must hold hearings on the draft before a final vote on Dec. 11. A hearing is set for 7 p.m. Nov. 17 at Bethel High School in Hampton.

With a collective price tag that one source puts at around $200 million next year, these recommendations could easily die on the budget vine during the upcoming legislative session.

Both candidates for governor are touting tax-cutting platforms. Commission members admit that the cost to implement most of these proposals could be prohibitive.

``I don't see how we can vote on this until we see the cost,'' said former Senate Majority Leader Hunter B. Andrews, D-Hampton, who is vice chairman of the commission.

But ignoring programs that would catch more children as they begin school would be costly in the long run, said Rebecca S. Harvey, principal of Thoroughgood Elementary in Virginia Beach.

As president of the 1,100-member Virginia Association of Elementary School Principals, Harvey told commission members they ought to support expanding kindergarten statewide from three hours to 5 1/2 and pouring more money into programs for 4-year-olds identified as being at risk of dropping out.

``These programs are necessary in every school to provide the early literacy and language development essential for learning to read,'' Harvey said. ``Early intervention, remediation, and not retention is the only responsible and least expensive course of action.''

Harvey's proposal carries more than the usual weight befitting an educator because she also sits on the commission's subcommittee on Consequence and Accountability.

In many aspects, the commission's tentative recommendations follow the lead of new standards adopted by the state Board of Education last month. Under the new standards, which phase in over seven years, at least 70 percent of students who take the SOLs must pass if the school is to remain accredited.

The commission's draft talks about a system of rewards and consequences for schools, depending on their performance.

One recommendation requires schools to submit improvement plans to local school boards if their students' test scores fall below new state accreditation standards and those scores have shown no signs of improvement. Those improvement plans should address areas such as teacher training, student remediation and parental involvement.

Some commission members said they also were wary of giving local school boards wide latitude in determining whether students who fail the SOLs can be pushed forward into the next grade. Specifically, they pointed to a board's potential sympathy for an athlete who bombs the eighth-grade SOLs but whose contribution to a high school sports team might be reason enough to promote him.

``There are school boards that, for local reasons, may not have the political backbone or the intellectual discipline to limit social promotions in cases where it's not appropriate,'' said Alan L. Wurtzel, vice chairman of Circuit City Stores Inc. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

SUGGESTIONS

Force schools to remediate students who fail the new state

Standards of Learning tests.

Increase training programs for teachers.

Mandate schools whose test scores fall short of full

accreditation to develop a school improvement plan.

Create alternative education programs for disruptive children.

Expand kindergarten from a half-day to a full day statewide.

Require teachers to be proficient in technology.

Bar students who drop out of school before age 18 from obtaining

a driver's license.

Provide financial rewards for teachers and administrators whose