TESTS MAY CHANGE: TOO MANY KIDS FLUNK

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 28, 1992                   TAG: 9202280143
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium
TESTS MAY CHANGE: TOO MANY KIDS FLUNK
The state Board of Education will consider new policies in Virginia's Literacy Passport testing program amid growing concern that many pupils will be unable to pass the exams.
"There are many vexing questions that face us in regard to this particular program," said Joseph Spagnolo, state superintendent of public instruction.
The Literacy Passport test first was administered to sixth-graders in the 1989-90 school year. Under state law, a pupil must pass all three parts of the test - reading, writing and mathematics - to be promoted to ninth grade and to graduate.
Some state educators have said they were worried that significant numbers of students will be unable to pass the test. Most of the first 76,000 students who need the passport are in the eighth grade and approaching high school.
"A student cannot be classified as a ninth-grader until such time they pass the three components of the literacy passport," Spagnolo said.
Although the figures aren't in, he estimates as many as 25 percent of the eighth-graders have not passed the test. Local school divisions have been asked to report their numbers to the state Department of Education.
About 65 percent of the 76,260 sixth-graders who took the test in its first year passed all three parts and won the passport. Those who did not could take the test again as seventh-graders.
About 8,500 seventh-graders retook all three parts of the test in the 1990-91 school year, the program's second year, and only 46 percent obtained a passport. The test will be given again in May.
"Some kids, even those with A's and B's, are not passing the test," said Sandra Vaughan, vice president of the state Board of Education. "There is a large bloc of students who are unable to take tests well."
Spagnolo told the board during a meeting Wednesday that proposed policy changes on the testing program will be offered in April.
Among the policies to be considered is whether eighth-graders who flunk the test when it is administered in May should get another chance in the summer, Spagnolo said.
He said he favors the idea of the test, but some difficulties arise in administering it uniformly in diverse parts of the state.
"The Literacy Passport is precisely where we want to go," he said. "But the question is: How do you deal with it on a statewide basis?"
It is up to local school divisions to decide how to handle students who have not passed the test by ninth grade. Those students can be retained in the eighth grade or placed in another setting. They can attend high school but would be classified as "ungraded" students.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB