Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 27, 1993 TAG: 9305270246
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But the results may not point to a generation of couch potatoes. In fact, it appears to come down to this - they can't do pull-ups.
"The kids do well on three of the four [physical fitness] tests," Roanoke County Assistant Superintendent Deanna Gordon said. "But they have a lot of trouble with upper-arm strength."
That's a complaint Del Moser, the Education Department's associate specialist for health and physical education, hears often.
It's no excuse, he said.
"Kids do well on things that they do on a regular basis," he said. "If the only time a student does a pull-up is the couple of times they do it for the test every year, they're not going to do well."
The physical fitness scores - up slightly across the state over the past year but still showing a majority of students failing - are only one measure of how well Virginia's schools are doing. The state released a report Wednesday including 48 indicators of public school performance, from standardized test scores to dropout rates to the number of seniors learning to type.
The report attempts to measure how well-prepared Virginia students are for college or work. But because the data can be broken out on a school-by-school basis, it also helps identify programs that work exceptionally well, or exceptionally poorly, Education Department spokesman Jim Foudriat said.
On the whole, Virginia's schools are doing better, the report showed.
Of the 46 items the state measured consistently for the past three years, Virginia's schools posted gains in 38. Improvements appeared in the number of students earning advanced diplomas, including minority students, and the number remaining in school.
But the number of students learning workplace skills - such as keyboarding - fell slightly, as did the number of students completing vocational programs.
The number of sixth-graders passing the state's literacy test fell dramatically - from 72 to 64 percent - but that's because the state changed its grading method for the 1991-92 academic year, Foudriat said.
Wednesday's report included information for the three academic years ending in 1991-92.
Foudriat said state education leaders continue to be concerned about poor performance on physical fitness tests.
The number of students able to pass all four tests rose by 1 percentage point in elementary and middle schools statewide, but fell 1 percentage point in the high schools, to 22 percent.
Health scores rose for high school students in Botetourt, Floyd, Giles, Pulaski, Wythe and Montgomery counties and Roanoke, while they fell or remained static for those in Bedford, Franklin and Roanoke counties and the cities of Radford and Salem.
But more than 60 percent of high school students in all those localities continued to fail at least one of the tests, which include sit-ups, pull-ups, a mile-long walk or run and stretching exercises.
The tests were developed by the Presidential Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, Foudriat said.
Many localities complained that their students did well except when it came to the upper-body tests, which don't measure the types of activities students learn in physical education classes.
Montgomery County schools emphasize sports and leisure activities - such as volleyball, tennis and aerobics - in their physical education classes, said Jim Sellers, assistant superintendent for instructional services.
"Very few of us do pull-ups or sit-ups in our leisure time," he said. "And we weren't bothered by it until someone started to test us on it."
Likewise, Roanoke County schools emphasize a wide range of sports activities that doesn't necessarily develop upper-body strength, Gordon said.
And she has no plans to change the whole curriculum "in order to just get that up."
Norm Michaels, Roanoke's assistant superintendent for instruction, said the city recently changed its physical education classes in an effort to improve its scores, which rose from 17 percent of high school students passing the test to 19 percent last year.
"Tell us what you're going to test, and our kids will do as well as anyone," he said.
Despite a jump in the minority dropout rate from 4 percent to 10 percent, Roanoke saw its best report card ever this year, Michaels said.
He disputed the state's estimate of how many minority high school students quit coming to school.
"Eighty people who left last year came back," he said, but weren't counted because of a time lag in collecting information.
Another 34 moved to other jurisdictions. Michaels said it often takes years for his office to determine if a student moved elsewhere or simply stopped coming to school, which is against the law. He placed the minority dropout rate much lower, closer to 5 percent.
Other school divisions, such as Salem, saw many of their scores remain steady, a sign Superintendent Wayne Tripp took as evidence that the state's numbers were valid.
"In some ways, I found the consistency of the information welcome news," he said.
Salem and other school divisions will report the results of the state's report card process, called the Outcome Accountability Project, to their school boards during the next few weeks.
The state ultimately will use these measures as a means for holding schools accountable for what students learn, Foudriat said, through a series of sanctions or rewards. The state Board of Education expects to establish that system by the 1998-99 school year.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***