THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504010105
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
City staff's recommended funding for schools for 1995-96 is $429,893,457. That's more than 47% of all the city's income, 5.85% more than school funding last year but 3.5% less than schools sought. That means no purchase of Celebration Station and no magnet middle school at Kemps Landing without cutting other school programs or talking City Council into more funds. And that means a debate which today begins with Beach parent Nancy Jacobs (at right) and segues into the larger education debate.
At the federal level it centers on Goals 2000, which dangles millions for education before the 50 states. The Virginia Board of Education is leery, and rightly so. The program also dangles entangling strings, like a national panel to set learning standards. Here's a preview: Its national history standard mentions Harriet Tubman six times; Robert E. Lee, zilch.
Here's another preview: the debate here in the general's home state over revisions to the state Standards of Learning, or SOLs. Excerpts from a letter on that subject to the state school superintendent from Beach Superintendent Sid Faucette appear below.
The public debate on SOLs began last week in Norfolk. It boiled down to a general philosophical di-vide between educators and non-educators: Educators insist that they know best how, what and when to educate children. Parents aren't so sure. Understandably so: The gist of teachers' remarks was: We can teach any child anything - except these SOLs. We must be held accountable, but to our own `subjective' standards. And the standards set must be standards every child can meet.
But what happens when one sixth-grader has met that standard two weeks ahead of some classmates, two months ahead of others and a spurious but popular pedagogical theory of equity sits them in one classroom all or most of the time?
Nancy Jacobs' isn't the only mind inquiring about plans for the gifted. Some citizen members of a committee tasked with advising schools on gifted programs were jolted by Dr. Faucette's proposed school budget and Major School Improvement Initiatives: They spring new programs (like an arts school associated with the Beach Center for the Arts) and shift long-anticipated gifted programs in priority, funding, site and target population. They jolted some School Board members, too.
The school budget as a moving target should prompt plentiful debate: When will Council stop funding it lump-sum, and the School Board start keeping closer track? MEMO: Related opinion on page 6. by CNB