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

DATE: TUESDAY, April 5, 1994                   TAG: 9404050131
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By JAMES P. JONES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A SETBACK FOR EDUCATIONAL REFORM

AS HAS been discussed on these pages, the General Assembly at its recently concluded session passed a bill establishing a new board to fix the qualifications of public-school teachers. At the present time, the state Board of Education makes those rules, but the Virginia Education Association, with plenty of clout in the legislature, made this new board a top priority. The bill passed, even though the state attorney general opined that the new board would be unconstitutional.

What's wrong with this idea? Plenty. The most important reason is that improving our state's education system (and almost everyone agrees that it does need improving) requires a consistent and focused approach to change. We've been tinkering around the edges of education reform in the United States for years, only to see education performance by our kids continue to decline. To further splinter efforts to improve our schools by creating a new policy board is simply the wrong direction to take.

The VEA argues that teacher morale would be improved by a teacher-dominated certification or licensure board, like the professional boards that license lawyers and doctors. But most doctors and lawyers don't work for the government as teachers do. Virginia's taxpayers spend more than $5 billion per year on public schools (most of which goes to teacher salaries and benefits), and they ought to have a citizen board to oversee all efforts to improve education. Certainly teachers should be a crucial part of deciding what changes are to be made, but ultimately it's those who represent the rest of society who should decide on policy changes.

And it's not as if the present Board of Education hasn't taken teachers' views into account. The Board of Education has a teacher advisory board, composed primarily of active teachers, which studies and recommends policy changes. In the past four years, the advisory board has submitted 12 separate sets of recommendations concerning teacher certification and training to the Board of Education. Of the 12, 10 sets of recommendations were adopted verbatim.

The remaining two were adopted in part. The Board of Education declined to follow the advisory board's advice in only two respects: The Board of Education decided to proceed with a pilot program (subject to further review) for the ``fast track'' certification of special-education teachers in areas of short supply; and it authorized limited programs to train persons with special qualifications, such as military retirees, to become teachers without the normal teacher-college methodology courses. These were certainly reasonable compromises and there was no evidence of any bias against teachers.

In spite of the VEA's conviction that a new teacher board will be good for its membership, I'm convinced it will not help attract the best and brightest to the teaching profession, and it will be positively harmful to the cause of education reform. Gov. Allen ought to consider this bill for one of his earliest vetoes.

James P. Jones of Abingdon is president of the state Board of Education.

by CNB