THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504010106
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SERIES: School Report Card
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
COMPARING LITTLE Montgomery County's schools with those of a suburban giant like Virginia Beach is analogous to pitting David against Goliath. But David has shown once again that he can rival Goliath - at least in many categories of the state's annual report card for schools.
The county school district, according to a computer analysis by The Virginian-Pilot, is similar in some demographics to Virginia Beach, although its 8,700-student enrollment is only about 11 percent of the resort city's.
Montgomery County set its mind to improving its showing on the state's annual report card, and it did.
The county's schools focused on increasing the percentage of sixth-graders who pass the state's Literacy Passport Test, a measure of reading, writing and math skills. The pass rate jumped.
School leaders required middle school students to take computer keyboarding, considered important for preparing students for the world of work. Now nearly all students have been introduced to keyboarding.
Montgomery guidance counselors have begun urging students not bound for college to enroll in a vocational program. The numbers are on the rise.
Overall, Montgomery County posted gains on more than half of the 48 criteria on the state's report card, which is designed to measure schools' and school systems' performance by the amount of improvement they show.
``It's been almost a self-fulfilling prophecy,'' said James L. Sellers, the county's assistant superintendent for instruction. ``The more we saw we could positively impact, the more we decided we wanted to positively impact.''
Virginia Beach's performance on the report card, while stellar, was not as inspiring a tale of achievement as Montgomery's.
The computer analysis, which compared the resort city with five of its peers and the state average, showed that the Beach is maintaining its strong position in education. But it could be stronger.
When it comes to preparing students for college, for example, a point the city school system has prided itself on, Virginia Beach falls slightly behind two of its peers - Chesterfield and Prince William counties - in improving the percentage of minority students earning advanced studies diplomas.
Montgomery County posted the largest percentage gains in students earning advanced studies diplomas, as well as the percentage of minorities earning them. But Sellers attributes that largely to a statistical anomaly. In districts with relatively few students, small gains in numbers may show up as large percentage increases, giving the appearance that they are making greater strides than districts with larger student populations.
K. Edwin Brown, Virginia Beach's assistant superintendent for instruction, said he is pleased with the overall percentage of students who earn the college prep diploma - 49 percent last year.
``That's almost half of our student population,'' he said.
Virginia Beach did not do as well as some of its peers in improving work training for students who do not plan to go to college. The School Board this year made technical and career education one of its priorities, vowing to devote more resources and attention to work training programs.
The city showed an 8 percentage point decline over the past four years in the number of non-college bound students who completed a work training program. Over the same period, Chesapeake showed a 17-point increase.
Nor did Virginia Beach show improvement between 1990-91 and 1993-94 in the percentage of 12th-graders who reported having taken a computer keyboarding or typing class.
All Beach middle-school students now are taking keyboarding classes, which should improve those figures in future years.
One other troubling statistic is that attendance is down throughout city schools. School officials say they don't know how to explain it.
One problem could be the way it is reported. The state report card records the percentage of students who are absent 10 days or fewer from school, an indication of how many kids are attending school regularly. But city school officials monitor attendance in a different way - a monthly average of the percentage of students who are in attendance on any given day. The monthly attendance rate is typically a higher number than the overall attendance rate, which could have given schools a false sense of security.
``I wish I could tell you exactly why it is happening,'' said Susan K. Horton, principal of Hermitage Elementary, where the percentage of students who attended school regularly fell from 84 percent in 1990-91 to 71 percent last year.
``We are well aware of it,'' Horton said. Hermitage's school planning council earlier this year began focusing on increasing overall student attendance, not just monthly figures. The school's business partner, Central Fidelity Bank, now donates prizes for students who have perfect attendance weekly and at the end of every grading period.
``I can't say that we have made tremendous gains, but we have certainly improved over last year,'' Horton said.
Like Montgomery County, Virginia Beach has succeeded where it has set its mind to improve.
Among the school district's peers, Beach schools have the best pass rate for the state's sixth-grade Literacy Passport Test - 80 percent last year. The Beach also was near the top in improving that rate over the past three years. (1990-91 pass rates were not counted, because of an adjustment in the state's grading of the tests which skewed the scores.)
The gains are largely thanks to hard work at school level, such as Bayside Middle's sixth-grade campus, where 67 percent of students passed last year, compared to 54 percent the year before, the first year the school had sixth-graders.
``Last year the teachers worked very diligently every day in the classroom on writing and the reading and the math,'' said A. Dianne Joyner, Bayside Middle principal.
Teachers tutor kids before and after school. This year, students who are having trouble in math or language arts spend their elective periods in classes designed to improve their performance.
``It ultimately helps students to read; they understand their language arts and their math,'' Joyner said. ``Things they might not have understood in the regular class are clearer to them now.'' MEMO: SCHOOL REPORT CARD
Opportunities for Virginia Beach Schools
Threats for Virginia Beach Schools
For complete information see microfilm
ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by CHARLIE MEADS
Teacher's assistant Janet Conner tutors Jonathan Dodd during a Core
Plus class at Bayside Middle School's sixth-grade campus. The Core
Plus program attempts to bolster students' skills in language arts
and math.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH SCHOOLS COMPARISON by CNB