THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602230475
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Even though ``The New ABCs of Public Education'' affect every student, every teacher and every school in North Carolina, most people still don't know what they are.
The rewritten rulebook handed down last year by the newly empowered State Board of Education is designed to give individual school educators more leeway to teach as they see fit and to hold them more accountable when they fail.
Some bursts of freedom, and increased pressure to get students ready for specific end-of-year tests, are altering the way educators across the state look at their jobs.
``I think this is a profound change in the way schools have been run in the state,'' said Belinda Brodie, a school improvement consultant for the Public Schools of North Carolina.
To help the state board explain the sweeping changes and what they mean to children and educators across North Carolina, Brodie is facilitating the Pasquotank County end of a 10-site teleconference Saturday about the New ABCs.
The forum, which will originate from Durham and include appearances by State Education Board Chairman Jay M. Robinson and a host of top educators from Raleigh, will be held at 10 a.m. in College of The Albemarle's B building, local school officials said.
``This is being used as a get-out-the-information session,'' Charles White, school-community relations director for the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools, said Thursday. Parents, educators and curious residents will have a chance to ask questions about the changes.
It's a significant event, he said, because the New ABCs are likely to drive state education policy into the next century.
``This is what they're hanging their hat on,'' White said. ``This is going to be the gambit to provide the leadership and provide the road map through the year 2000.''
The New ABCs grew out of a legislative mandate last year that gave the appointed state board broader powers while limiting the duties of the elected superintendent of public instruction.
The board's plan, presented to the General Assembly last spring, recommended cutting the education department some 40 percent by July. It also pushes decision-making to the school level and holds each school, rather than each district, responsible for the success or failure of its students.
``It is school-based,'' Brodie said. Under the old sysem of evaluating districts, ``sometimes schools were able to fall through the cracks or get lost in the shuffle.''
To decide if schools are doing their jobs, state officials this year will look at students' performance on reading, writing and math tests in key grades. Student learning will be measured by comparing student groups with their past performance rather than against a state average - a plan that drafters say is more fair.
But the reliance on a single test - this year the multiple-choice end-of-grade and end-of-course exams, has caused consternation among educators who feel pressure to produce good scores at all costs.
Unlike the past, principals' and teachers' jobs could depend on those results. And despite efforts not to teach to the test, White acknowledges, school officials are always mindful of how they will be judged.
``We have become acutely aware of the things we are doing in the classroom with our students,'' White said.
Brodie said that ``there's always going to be a question about imposing a standardized test of any type.'' But, she said, there is no other way to hold educators accountable.
Pasquotank is one of 10 pilot sites trying to establish a long-term system for measuring student achievement. Its role in the New ABCs will be explained Saturday, officials said. by CNB