Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509180033
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Student assessments are new in the county this year. They involve tests at the start of the year to determine at what levels each student has mastered various subjects.
But School Board member Lewis Pratt, in visiting different schools at the start of the year, found many teachers struggling with this additional chore.
"Can a teacher do all the duties they're trying to do now, and do this?" he asked Thursday night at a School Board meeting.
Pam Simpson, coordinator of curriculum and instruction for the school system, said the question should be whether teachers can afford not to do the assessments.
"Yeah, it has stirred up comfort levels a whole lot. But we're learning wonderful things about children," she said, balancing between not boring them by teaching what they already know and not losing them by teaching over their heads.
"If you don't know that, your instruction is a train going to Boston without knowing where the passengers are getting on and off," Simpson said. And county teachers have not known that with any certainty until now.
"I don't think I've heard anyone disagree with the concept," Pratt said. "I'm not sure, but I think the teacher with 24 kids, she feels like she doesn't have a minute to spare."
Student assessments are such powerful teaching tools, Superintendent Bill Asbury said, that "we can't afford not to do it." But allowances can be made for more time as teachers learn how to make them during this first year, he said.
Janis Carter, principal at Snowville Elementary School, said the assessments do make more work. She said she had to change her book order when she found where most pupils in her school were in their learning.
"We know the children now. We thought we knew them, but we didn't," Carter said.
"Every day is more comfortable, more relaxed," teacher Amy Brooks said of making the assessments. "To go back now, it would be archaic."
She said it is invaluable to know at what level a student is learning when preparing lessons.
Teachers have been trained in making the assessments, and will get more training. Associate Superintendent Phyllis Bishop said the speed need not be more than assessing two students a day.
Some teachers worry that they are losing valuable classroom time by having to do that. But, Simpson said, "assessing is teaching. It's just a different way of thinking about the circle of teaching."
In other business Thursday, the School Board got its first look at a proposed policy for student computer and Internet access.
The need for such a policy, Asbury said, "is a sign of the times." School officials want to make sure the technology is used for educational purposes and avoid certain kinds of negative material which has made its way onto the information highway.
"This is a whole new frontier for most of us, trying to write policy for something like the Internet," he said.
"What we want to do is stress responsible use," said Isabel Berney, the school system's director of research, media and technology. "These are uncharted waters for us all."
The proposed policy will be shared with county principals next week.
Asbury made it clear that county school officials want to work with parents who have misgivings about signing a parent-principal contract approved by the 1995 General Assembly, which carries $50 penalties for those not signing.
"The language of the law says that we can refer parents to court, not that we must or that we should," Asbury said. That would happen "only after we've exhausted every other step available to us."
He agreed that more parent involvement is needed in working with students. "We need people to understand that society is a different world than it was 20 years ago, 15 years ago," he said. "And the problem has been around a while."
Donna Travis, a parent, asked the School Board to emphasize with school administrators that children should not be penalized if administrators have problems with parents over signing the contract. Asbury agreed. "We surely don't want kids put in the middle here and put on the hot seat if we have parents who refuse to sign," he said.
Asbury said the state requirement amounts to still another unfunded mandate from the state. The school system had to pay more than $3,200 in postage to notify parents of the contract requirement, not counting the costs of staff time in getting the information out.
by CNB