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

DATE: FRIDAY, March 31, 1995                   TAG: 9504060015
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW STANDARDS OF LEARNING

The need for revised and rigorous standards should be, however, beyond dispute.

Such standards summarize what students should know, and be able to do, after completing each grade level. State education officials, working with educators around the commonwealth, have developed draft revisions in standards for social studies, language arts, science and math. Predictably, the English and social-studies standards have proved the most controversial.

With good reason. Teachers who've been speaking out against specifics of the revisions have been making good points. The Board of Education should take note.

Teachers are right to worry that the Governor's Commission on Champion Schools politicized the proposal, when it rewrote parts of the draft social-studies standards submitted by educators from Virginia school divisions. (Why, for example, were references to slavery and segregation removed?)

They are right to worry that some of the standards are, excuse the expression, developmentally inappropriate, and overemphasize rote memorization at the expense of critical thinking and analysis.

(Here's an example of what 2nd-graders would be required to know under the revised social-studies standards: "The student will identify individuals and groups of people by name and deed who were important to the development of new forms of government and religions in the Mediterranean region (e.g., Athenian democracy, Roman Republic, Christianity, Islam) and their impact on American political and religious beliefs." Again, these are 2nd-graders we're talking about.)

Even in the face of specific failings such as these, however, teachers would do well not to defend a status quo that isn't working. Many of the new standards, they should agree, mark a clear improvement over the old ones, most of which date from the 1980s. And the need for revision remains compellingly evident.

Social studies in Virginia, as in most of the rest of the country, have followed a long-used "expanding horizons" model that makes sense on paper but has proved less than engaging or effective in the classroom. Students study, in successive grades starting in kindergarten, first themselves, then their family, the community, the state and the world. Self-esteem is nice, but it's time to try something else.

Meantime, who can find fault in the sentiment expressed by William Bosher, state superintendent of public instruction, when he says the goal of the revisions is to develop standards that are "academic, rigorous, measurable and free of jargon"?

Public schools need more accountability. They also need higher academic expectations. Too many students nowadays are being promoted - and graduated - without the knowledge they need in the real world.

That sort of knowledge is best obtained by developing critical-thinking skills and by learning to work in teams to solve problems creatively - not by memorizing, in 2nd grade, the names of Greek philosophers.

And no one should remain under the illusion that any standards of learning, of whatever quality or rigor, can compensate for shortcomings in the act of education itself, in the classroom.

But, assuming that the Board of Education changes what needs to be changed - and retains what is good - in the proposed new standards, Virginia's students should be the first to benefit. Virginia's teachers and parents should be the first to welcome that outcome.