THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410230046
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
At public outings this month, a commission appointed by Gov. George F. Allen to reform education has been alternately praised for seeking substantive change and accused of pushing a right-wing agenda to dismantle public schools.
On Monday, Hampton Roads citizens can meet with the Governor's Commission on Champion Schools and offer opinions on Virginia's education system.
The commission will hold a three-hour public hearing at Menchville High School in Newport News. This will be the fifth of seven hearings and, so far, hundreds of people have attended them.
``This is such an opportunity for everyone - teachers, parents, business people, anyone - to have an input,'' said commission member Lillian F. Tuttle, who chairs a committee on academic standards and testing.
Tuttle heads a Chesterfield County advocacy group called Academics First, formed because of concerns that the county's school system was ``watering down'' its academic curriculum.
``I think this commission is wide open, really, to look at the suggestions people have.''
Commission members and Allen administration officials, sensitive to criticism that their course for reform has been predetermined, are stressing that the public comments will count in the recommendations they send to Allen in early December.
``Until the hearings are done, we're not going to recommend anything,'' said commission member Michelle Easton, who chairs a committee looking into the controversial issue of school choice, including such ideas as charter schools and giving parents tax credits to send children to private schools.
At a hearing this month in Northern Virginia, the Fairfax County Council of PTAs charged that the commission ``appears heavily stacked with advocates for private and home schooling, as well as others who have advanced a radical right-wing agenda for the public schools.''
The council said the commission members were ``far out of Virginia's mainstream.''
But Easton, an Allen appointee on the State Board of Education, said many at the hearings say they support choice, ranging from students' ability to pick which public school they attend to tax credits.
Easton said much interest has been generated by discussion of charter schools, already in operation in about a dozen states. If the concept is adopted in Virginia, teachers, parents or other groups wanting to start a school could receive a charter from the state and get state money to educate students.
``This is not a revolutionary notion, if 10 to 15 other states have allowed it,'' Easton said. ``People need and want more information about it.''
The commission, named by Allen last May, is charged primarily with finding ways to raise academic standards and student performance.
But committees also are examining school funding, educational alternatives, teaching standards, safety and discipline in the schools, parental and community involvement, and school-to-work programs.
Critics have focused on hot-button issues such as choice and family-life education, which forms the core of Virginia's sex-education instruction.
Criticism, for example, has been aimed at the commission's discussion of a proposal that would require parents to ``opt in'' children to family-class rather than the existing system in which parents must choose to remove their kids.
The commission also has discussed ways to instill ``character and excellence'' in students through the school curriculum and to enhance the religious and ethical instruction of children, including the use of ``release time'' for off-campus religious teaching.
A set of draft recommendations will be presented to Allen in early December. The commission's final report will be completed next spring. by CNB