The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, April 9, 1995                  TAG: 9504070013
SECTION: COMMENTARY               PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   56 lines

TEACHERS, NOT THE NEA, CRITICIZED STANDARDS

As I read the comments from Jake Priode (``Measure teachers' performance,'' Another View, April 5) regarding the night of March 27 at the State Board of Education meeting concerning Standards of Learning, several things were made clear to me.

First, Mr. Priode is lock step with the right-wing tactic of attacking the National Education Association for anything not consistent with the conservative agenda. The National Education Association has not taken a position on the Standards of Learning, nor has the Virginia Education Association. A few local-affiliate presidents did speak, and local associations are free to take stands on issues as they deem appropriate. However, most of the teachers that night spoke as individuals on behalf of groups of colleagues or themselves. While Mr. Priode is free to disagree with their comments, he reveals his political agenda by taking a cheap shot at the NEA.

Second, the teachers who spoke that night did not indicate in any form that they did not want standards. They spoke to the issue of the appropriate grade level for introducing certain subject matter - about which professionals and lay people may have honest differences of perspective. Mr. Priode may not realize that standards already exist. The purpose of the public hearing was to discuss revisions to those standards.

Third, to accuse those teachers of thinking that ``children should learn at their own pace and study whatever interests them'' is to unfairly and politically distort what was actually said. The message was, ``Do not apply a straitjacket approach to the learning process, but do provide for the differences among children that contemporary research has identified.'' Educators should no more ignore current developments in their field than should doctors, engineers, physicists or any other group of professionals. When I go to my dentist, I certainly appreciate that he does not provide treatment with the same technology that dentists used on my father.

Finally, Mr. Priode engages in the rhetoric of the far right when he accuses teachers that night of fearing they ``would also be held to a standard of teaching that could be measured.'' He adds that, ``The NEA would never want that to happen.'' The teachers who spoke on March 27 were visibly interested wholly in the best interests of children. Only political demagoguery could twist their comments into a fear of accountability. Mr. Priode is blinded by his extremism.

Mr. Priode expresses appreciation to the teachers who gave his generation such a beneficial education. My guess is that many of those teachers were members of the National Education Association and/or a state affiliate.

JOHN MEDAS, director

Education Association of Norfolk

Norfolk, April 5, 1995 by CNB