DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710260030

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   80 lines

CHESAPEAKE BOARD STUDIES WAYS TO BOOST STUDENT PERFORMANCE

The School Board spent 12 hours this weekend discussing issues it - and, by extension, the city - will be wrestling with in the coming months.

Here's the short version:

There is a need for expanded programming at the elementary level for both gifted students and those who have behavioral problems.

Full-day kindergarten is desirable, particularly for at-risk students - but can the district afford the extra staff and classroom space required?

What is the best way to improve test scores without overemphasizing their importance, allowing them to overshadow good instruction?

The School Board needs a bigger boardroom. Is the solution simply moving their meetings to City Council chambers? Does that do harm to the school division's autonomy?

Switching school opening times so that high school students go earlier in the morning and elementary school students go later may seem like a good idea, and it is the norm in most districts. But research shows that elementary students learn better earlier in the morning, while adolescents learn better later. Then there's the cost of hiring new drivers and buying new buses - at over $50,000 apiece - that switching to the new schedule would require.

What to do, what to do?

Such topics tend to be too big to handle in regular board meetings. So the board sets aside time for them in an annual retreat. This year's retreat was held Friday and Saturday at the Hugo A. Owens Middle School.

The retreat is not a formal meeting, so board members made no formal decisions. They did, however, direct the administration to look into the possibility of extending the school day by 30 minutes, expanding kindergarten to a full day, moving their meetings to City Council chambers to save money, and expanding elementary programs for gifted students and for those with behavioral problems.

The board nixed an idea to let home-schoolers and private school students take courses part time in the district on a tuition basis, with the majority saying that while it might sound like a good idea, the logistics of carrying it out would be prohibitive.

In most cases, the board had to balance financial costs of programs against the cost of not implementing them. For example, inadequate programs for elementary school students who have behavioral problems - currently the district's formal programs start with seventh-grade students - not only affect those students but the classes they disrupt.

``Because the problems are going younger and younger, the programs have to go younger and younger as well,'' said Linda D. Palombo, assistant superintendent for instruction.

That apparently also holds for programs for the gifted. Palombo said that elementary-age students do not get the enrichment programs they may need. Not providing them could lead to the same problem as letting disruptive elementary students go unchecked.

``Many of the children who are behavior problems in middle school are children who were never identified in elementary school that they were academically gifted, and they were,'' said Palombo.

Beyond that, the School Board and the administration discussed how to ensure that any salutary programs they selected wouldn't have unintended side effects.

For example, two years ago the district sharply increased its emphasis on improving its standardized test scores - partially in response to state initiatives to have school accreditation hinge on how many children pass such tests. Each school in the district must submit a Test Improvement Plan.

But the downside, said Superintendent W. Randolph Nichols, is the danger of overemphasizing the importance of what, in many cases, may be flawed tests.

``I'm not sure you can look at a test and be sure it is truly representative of the nation's students,'' he said. ``. . . You have to look at them with a somewhat jaundiced eye.''

``I hope that somewhere down the line we don't end up with a society of people who know how to take tests but who don't know what's behind them,'' said board Vice Chairman Roderic A. Taylor. MEMO: The board will hold its next regular meeting on Monday at 7 p.m.

in the school administration building on Cedar Road. The meeting will

begin with a public hearing on proposed attendance zone adjustments in

Deep Creek. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Superintendent W. Randolph Nichols says overemphasizing test scores

may mean relying on possiblyflawed tests.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu