DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997                 TAG: 9703010014

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Margaret Edds 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   79 lines

ALLEN CHOOSES PRAGMATISM

A foot-high stack of memos and drafts at the state Department of Education documents the thorny path to the release last week of proposed standards of accreditation for Virginia's public schools. (Please see related editorial on facing page.)

In a Jan. 19 memo, for example, Board President Michelle Easton advised Superintendent of Public Instruction Richard La Pointe, ``Board members are not prepared to accept either your accreditation criteria or procedures at this time.''

A response, unsigned but apparently drafted by a DOE staff member, challenged her logic. ``Easton says that this is the area of `greatest concern,' but she cannot articulate why. . . .''

Other documents suggest that board members and staff disagreed on an array of issues ranging from whether or not to mandate the teaching of family-life education to the question of whether to require that a specific percentage of classroom time be spent on English, math, social studies and science.

The competing ideas reflect the complexity of the task Gov. George F. Allen has assigned his education team: finding a way to judge public schools based on the performance of their students.

The documents reveal, as well, some of the internal struggles in an administration where ideology wars with pragmatism. La Pointe and Easton both came out of the Reagan administration, and both were appointed by Allen. But insiders say their current relationship is strained by Easton's more ideological orientation.

The document La Pointe presented last week warrants analysis both for its politics and its policy. Due to be threshed over in public hearings for the next two months, the outcome can affect the direction of Virginia schools for years to come.

Essentially, the proposed accreditation plan is Step 2 in an overhaul that began earlier in the Allen administration with the adoption of tougher standards for what must be taught in classrooms.

The plan is an attempt to add accountability. Among its proposed changes: Students will be tested in grades 3, 5, 8 and 11 on whether they are mastering the new standards. Passage of the 11th-grade test will be required for graduation, as will completion of a more rigorous curriculum.

Schools are advised that students who don't measure up in the lower grades ``should'' be retained for another year. Meanwhile, elementary schoolteachers are supposed to spend at least 75 percent of their time teaching core subjects.

In turn, schools will be judged by how students perform. Accreditation will depend in large measure on that showing.

Allowing for unanswered questions about what the tests will look like and how they will be graded, these are commendable steps. Anyone with children in the public schools, and particularly urban schools, knows that for a wealth of reasons too many children are learning too little.

From here, however, the scenario gets fuzzy. Precisely how accreditation will be linked to the tests, we don't yet know. Both the documents and the discussion at last week's board meeting make clear that internal debate still rages. Should there be a fixed achievement standard for accreditation? Should improvement in test scores be the primary measure? Should there be some combination, and if so, what?

It's also unclear what happens to schools that fail. La Pointe expects that parents, learning of their school's poor performance, will demand action. If that doesn't work, the courts can order improvements.

Which brings us to what anxious teachers and administrators see as the million-dollar question: How do you order a third-grader to improve a test score?

I find this a less fearsome question than some others do. If a school consistently performs poorly, a housecleaning might be in order. But, just as likely, a court might find that a school lacks the resources to do what's being asked of it. Either way, students win.

And we all win when the debate focuses on the three-Rs and not on extraneous, ill-advised ideas such as undercutting guidance counselors. With his marching orders coming from Allen, La Pointe prevailed in keeping such distractions out of the mix.

It is yet another sign, as Allen moves toward a race for the U.S. Senate in 2000, that he has rethought some earlier dogmatism. That makes him as quick a learner as he would have Virginia schoolchildren be. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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