ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 4, 1997 TAG: 9701060042
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
GOV. GEORGE Allen may be focusing on how to make sure his policies stick after he leaves office. But the rest of Virginia will be waiting, thank you, until the impacts of those policies are known before deciding what to hang on to and what to discard.
Take the administration's education reforms. The centerpiece has been a rewrite of the state's standards of learning, along with (yet another) series of tests to track whether students are mastering the curriculum. The element that promises to make these tests different from all the others is accountability.
Schools will be accountable for their students' performance, the administration has pledged. But just how success or failure will be measured among all of Virginia's schools, of widely disparate populations and means, remains unclear. The consequences for schools found wanting are equally uncertain.
At least until they know where it is headed, Virginians will have to reserve judgment on whether the state's testing/accountability system is a sound idea. And they won't know whether curriculum "reforms" are keepers or losers until they see (dare we use the word?) the outcome in terms of student achievement.
Throughout the roll-out of the new curriculum, teachers and school officials have complained that the state was spending big bucks to develop and administer tests, but precious little for training teachers in the new standards and for providing materials - such as new textbooks - that students will need to learn them.
Give Allen credit for acknowledging the problem: In his proposed budget amendments for the second year of the 1995-97 biennium is additional state aid to localities for transitional instructional materials, to be used until books can be updated. For now, some districts are finding they will have to buy more than one text to cover the varied material the new standards include.
Until the General Assembly at its upcoming session completes work on budget revisions, whether education reform becomes another unfunded mandate to localities won't be known. Only then can school districts find out just how much state money they'll get - and how much implementing the new standards of learning actually will cost.
One more unknown, in other words, making it only prudent to defer final judgment.
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB