ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 28, 1996 TAG: 9605290001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
THE VIRGINIA Education Association has some valid concerns about the Allen administration's statewide initiative to test students on new academic standards approved by the State Board of Education.
In particular, the teachers' organization contends that too little thought and money have been given to training teachers, developing curricula and buying new textbooks to help teach the new standards in math, science, English and social studies. A good point.
The tests, which the General Assembly has earmarked $12 million to develop, should be modified and postponed for two to four more years, says the VEA. And not until the year 2000 should any consequences be attached to varying performance shown in the test results. Otherwise, say the teachers, the intent - to make schools more accountable for the educational return on taxpayers' investment - can't be fulfilled.
Certainly it won't be fulfilled next year, and no one should expect it to be. As it is, the legislature has decreed that test results in 1997 will be regarded as experimental and hidden from the public.
Even so, the standards' intent may never be fulfilled if the difficult development of tests is slowed down too much. Part of that process will be to determine what's needed in terms of teacher retraining, new materials, etc.
The teachers' organization insists that it shares a commitment to accountability, but frets that too much focus will be put on test results. To be sure, tests are a crude measure of student learning and achievement - and of the quality of teaching. As Dan Fleming argues on today's Commentary page, a lot of questions about the standards remain to be answered.
Like it or not, though, tests are one of the few ways the public can gauge schools' performance, and judge from year to year whether performance is improving commensurate with rising expenditures. The public has a right to such a measuring tool. If it is used properly, educators and students also should benefit from having the results.
The state's new minimal standards and proposed testing program aren't ideal, certainly not the last word on needed education reform. They're no substitute for creative teaching strategies that can maximize learning of critical thinking skills.
The standards are, however, a good-faith effort to address a prevailing concern of many parents, employers and others: that too many young people today leave public schools without even basic knowledge and skills. Some national educators' groups have awarded Virginia's standards high marks.
In general, the VEA and others in the educational establishment do themselves - and Virginia's schoolchildren - no favor by seeming always to be nay-saying and complaining, by predicting failure before the assessment program has been developed and tried, by attempting to stall accountability.
The new standards, and tests to go along, are in themselves yet another experiment, another educational trend. They may not work. But they deserve a fair trial.
On top of past resistance to charter schools, teacher-testing, year-round education, flexible licensing of new teachers, and easier procedures for getting rid of mediocre teachers and rewarding excellent ones, the education establishment's less-than-eager response to the effort to raise academic standards only adds to the disappointment.
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