ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290056
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
LT. GOV. Don Beyer's arguments in favor of mandatory summer school for Virginia students who flunk statewide competency tests are not only compelling in themselves. They add to the case for year-round schools.
Beyer, widely expected to be the Democrats' candidate for governor next year, may be adding to his credentials as an education reformer, which is fine. Making standards more meaningful would be a good thing, if only for reasons of accountability.
But why stop there? Year-round schooling for all would benefit more students than mandatory summer school for some.
Last year, a third of Virginia's sixth-graders failed the Literacy Passport Test on basic reading, writing and mathematics skills. Mandatory summer school for those who flunk this test, and possibly the new statewide standards-of-learning tests due to begin in 1998, would offer early intervention to help those who fall behind their classmates.
But remedial instruction - after the fact of test failure - would not be nearly as educationally effective (or cost effective) as greater efforts to prevent such failure in the first place. And year-round schooling could help in this regard. In tiny Buena Vista, which pioneered the year-round concept in Virginia, students have consistently scored above the state average on the Literacy Passport Test.
The emphasis of Beyer's proposal, moreover, ought to be on the positive - leaving no one behind, assuring educational success, making sure everyone learns what they need to learn - rather than on the negative. To make summer school punitive and stigmatizing would be counterproductive, as well as cruel. Year-round schooling, on the other hand, would make summer a natural part of the school year for everyone.
Unfortunately, Virginia school districts have been slow to follow Buena Vista's lead. School officials and ambivalent parents and taxpayers need to understand that year-round education, with short breaks throughout the year, not only could make better use of school facilities. It would reduce a big impact associated with long summer vacations: students' failure to retain a good chunk of what they learned during the 180-day school year.
Year-round schools would offer more continuity of learning and more ongoing opportunities to intervene quickly with students who aren't keeping up. Indeed, national studies show that American public education continues to produce graduates who aren't well prepared to compete in the global economy, in part because they didn't spend enough time on academic subjects in school. (American students spend half as much time studying core subjects of math, reading, history and science as do students in France, Germany and Japan.)
Beyer's plan might serve to emphasize to students and their parents that there are consequences to failing tests. But using summer school as a penalty for failure would be far less productive than giving all students more time in the classroom to succeed. The lieutenant governor gets good marks as an education reformer. He'd get higher marks still if he would take the year-round course.
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