ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702100026
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
You can't fatten a pig by weighing it.
In education circles, that phrase coined by retired Virginia Tech professor Dan Fleming means: You can't produce better-educated kids by simply testing them.
Seventh-grade teacher Suzan Mauney agrees.
"Across the board, educational research is saying we need to make fundamental changes. We're being accused of going an inch deep and a mile wide [in content] and that's exactly the way we test," she said this week, sitting in her science classroom at Blacksburg Middle School.
The proverbial pig was mentioned again - by Fleming himself - at a testing forum sponsored by the Montgomery County school system Thursday night. Of the almost 70 people who came to hear about testing changes in Virginia, most weren't pleased with some aspect of the new system.
Parents and teachers worry the new barrage of testing proposed by the state will take up more time and not provide real assistance in improving education.
Teachers worry the testing points to a national trend toward accountability in education. A few months ago, for example, the Philadelphia School Board approved a program to give teachers in high-achieving schools financial bonuses, while those with low-performing students could be fired.
The Virginia Board of Education is already considering stopping the graduation of any 11th-grader who fails the new state test.
The test will focus on the newly developed Standards of Learning handed down by the state last year. The guidelines specify what content areas should be covered in which grades. Third-graders, for example, should learn the social and political ramifications following the Revolutionary War for Virginians. Eighth-graders will need to know how to create home pages on the Internet.
The standards are a good challenge, said fellow Blacksburg Middle School teacher Nyanne Hicks. But to test rote knowledge is missing the point.
"We regress to teaching Level 1 instead of covering topics more deeply like problem-solving skills. To [teach students to] regurgitate facts that they may or may not remember when they graduate strikes me as a poor use of my time," she said.
Virginia Tech professor Lawrence Cross, who specializes in educational testing, called the Standards of Learning test a "step backward" developed by politicians, not educators.
The test will be multiple choice and cover math, English, social studies and science facts. Students will also answer technology questions, but with pencil and paper, not computers. "Special populations," like children with disabilities or with limited English skills, will be included in the testing as well.
Children across the state will take the test in grades three, five, eight and 11.
Cross said such tests were popular in school systems for a few years. But most schools dropped them because it was too difficult to determine whether a child had "mastered" a subject simply by asking about a few items.
The test results will be given to school systems, but only in the form of overall subjects. In other words, a teacher may see a score for reading, but not for individual parts like vocabulary or comprehension.
Several people at the forum questioned how the test could assist teachers in altering the way they teach. If the content in sixth grade isn't tested until eighth grade - and if the specifics aren't included in the score results - then it's useless to teachers, some argued.
"Observations from parents, teachers and principals are as important as standardized tests," said Carol Fox, another teacher at Blacksburg Middle, earlier this week.
What will help parents more, said Cross, are the ability and achievement tests also scheduled to begin this year. The Stanford 9 and the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test will replace out-dated tests.
Those two tests compare students to national scores and provide a "pulse of how kids fare compared to others." In other words, Cross joked, "do my kids have a shot at Harvard?"
The tests should appease some parents like Virginia Tech professor R.J. Harvey. He has interpreted test scores and published pages and pages on his web site about how Montgomery County children with high ability are underachieving in school. He said the new ability and achievement tests should make it easier to determine who should be performing better.
Blacksburg Middle received much of the attention given by some parents concerned by Harvey's findings. That kind of information can be valuable, said Mauney and her two colleagues.
But they and other educators say they want to see more resources devoted to problems already identified after years of similar testing, not more testing.
Leaving Thursday's meeting, one educator mumbled, "We already know who can't read; more testing isn't going to help."
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Blacksburg Middle School teachers Nyanne Hicks (left)by CNBand Carol Fox are beginning to adjust to the new state Standards of
Learning, but they worry about the testing the will come along next
year. GENE DALTON STAFF. color.