Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 3, 1990 TAG: 9005030542
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: PATRICIA LOPEZ BADEN EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Your child hits the algebra books in class all year along, 45 minutes a day, most every school day from September through June.
So how much time did he or she actually spend learning algebra?
Less than 19 full days.
That's the startling statistic educators were hit with on the final day of the annual conference of state school superintendents at the Marriott in Roanoke.
Lee Banton, president of the Virginia School Boards Association, told superintendents Wednesday that the time may be here when "we need to be allowed to do less, but do it better."
Banton said school districts have become hamstrung by mandates that attempt to correct every social ill through the schools, nibbling away at precious academic time.
"Anything that goes wrong, the attitude is: Let the schools fix it," he said. "You know and I know that it can't be done. Let's define what a quality education is, narrow it down, and then give us the time to do it better."
Afterward, Banton said schools may have to rethink how much of their academic day they are willing to devote to family life, sex education, self esteem, drug education and the myriad of social courses that have little to do with academic basics.
"We are getting more and more mandated into a six-hour school day," he said. "Something's got to give. The idea that children get 19 full, six-hour days worth of a subject every year is intolerable."
Banton was one of several speakers - including Secretary of Education James Dyke and Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer - who hammered away at what are becoming familiar themes in education: eliminate disparity, increase high-level math and science courses, reduce the dropout rate and restructure education to meet the demands of the post-industrial age.
Dyke told the superintendents that by the year 2000 the number of math-based jobs will increase by 36 percent and, for the first time in history, a majority of all new jobs will require some college education.
Of the children in elementary school now, he said, one-fourth will live in poverty sometime during their school years.
"One-half can expect to live in a single-parent household at some point," he said. "If we don't provide extra help, early and consistently, the majority will drop out well before they even reach high school.
"But that won't be the last we'll hear from them. We'll add them to our welfare rolls, subtract them from our tax base and read about them in local crime reports."
Dyke said Virginia spends up to $30,000 a year housing a single prison inmate, "yet we spend, at most, $8,000 per pupil."
Ultimately, he said, "we are squandering a significant portion of each generation."
Dyke said the state must bring together a network of education, employment and economic development systems to improve education.
Dyke also said that in order to determine educational problems in Southwest Virginia he will be opening an office in Abingdon. "I want to hear first-hand the concerns of educators, business leaders and citizens in Southwest Virginia - where they think our educational system is going."
"If we are ever going to achieve a level of excellence," Dyke said, "we cannot permit economic status or geographic location to prevent access to the highest-quality education the commonwealth can provide."
Beyer also said that eliminating disparity must be a top priority for Virginia in the coming years.
"Educational economic disparity is one of the greatest challenges facing us," he said. "I don't think there is a single school system in Southwest Virginia that spends even half of what Fairfax spends."
Several weeks ago, the Council on Economic Enterprise Development issued a glowing report card for Virginia, Beyer said. "We got an A in economic vitality and three Bs."
But when it came to economic disparity, he said, "Virginia ranked 50th out of 50 states. We came in dead last."
That must change, Beyer said.
But in making those changes, state educators must resist the temptation to micro-manage, he said.
Instead, education should move toward "school-based management," in which a central authority sets the goals, but individual schools are allowed to devise their own method for getting there.
Beyer also said he strongly supported allowing parents to choose the school their child will attend, without regard for attendance boundaries or district lines.
While cautioning that he would never support choice that resegregated schools, "choice would let us put pressure on poorly performing schools and allow us to put money into successful schools."
by CNB