DATE: Friday, September 5, 1997             TAG: 9709050618

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:  115 lines

VA. APPROVES TOUGH STANDARDS FOR SCHOOLS TO KEEP ACCREDITATION

The state Board of Education - setting aside concerns from the public, legislators and the state's public schools chief - on Thursday unanimously approved overhauling Virginia's school accreditation standards.

The result: Schools and students could suffer serious penalties if enough students don't pass new state tests.

Schools will have to maintain at least a 70 percent pass rate on the tests to retain accreditation. Students will have to pass six of 11 subject tests in high school to receive their standard diplomas - and nine to get advanced studies diplomas.

The public schools would have until 2006-07 to boost their scores before they lost accreditation. The diploma requirements would kick in for graduates in 2004.

Gov. George F. Allen said after the vote that the revisions were ``probably the most enduring of all the legacies of our administration. . . . We finally have accountability in our schools for academic performance.''

The board also dropped the state requirement to teach Family Life Education, including sex education, and to employ guidance counselors in elementary schools. That decision will now be up to each school district. South Hampton Roads school officials said this week they intend to keep both programs.

One state board member, Rayford L. Harris Sr., a retired Richmond professor, urged his colleagues to ``have some kind of compassion'' for children and keep the elementary guidance requirement. His amendment was defeated by a 6-2 vote.

The proposals are final. For now.

But Democratic legislators - who question the feasibility of the 70 percent benchmark and the wisdom of dropping the sex-ed and guidance mandates - have vowed to overturn the board's actions when the General Assembly reconvenes.

``A lot of it is very good, but I have very serious concerns about elementary guidance counseling,'' said Sen. Stanley C. Walker, a Norfolk Democrat who is co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. ``From all the letters I have received - and there has been a sizable amount of them - it's something we need very badly.''

Allen, who will leave office in January, said he's not worried. ``This is what the people of Virginia want,'' he said. ``They want academics, and they also want accountability in their schools. For anybody who would question that - I don't think it would prevail in the legislature.''

Allen said the accreditation changes mark the third of his four-pronged initiative to revolutionize Virginia education.

The other three are toughening of curriculum standards; new state tests tied to those standards; and standardized ``school report cards'' to give parents more information about their schools.

The new standards are considered among the toughest in the nation.

Virginia, like most other states, previously judged accreditation based on factors such as staffing and library holdings. ``Now we're not just gauging our schools based on how much money they spend,'' Allen said. ``Now we're gauging our schools based upon students actually learning the basics.

``This is absolutely fantastic for students,'' Allen said. ``They're going to be the best-prepared kids in the nation.''

But some legislators and educators have said the 70 percent mark - set by the board and not the state Education Department - was arbitrary and might be impossible to reach for schools with heavy concentrations of low-income kids.

``If a locality is making reasonable progress toward that goal, it should not be penalized by losing accreditation,'' said Del. J. Paul Councill Jr., a Franklin Democrat who is chairman of the House Education Committee,

Even Richard T. La Pointe, Allen's state superintendent of public instruction, had suggested two alternatives: Set the pass rate after the test results come in or use a three-year average to avoid penalizing a school that has a bad year. Both were soundly defeated.

Afterward, Allen said the number is ``a good, logical standard to me. When you think of a pass rate, you think of 70 percent. . . .If more than 30 percent are not up to the level they should be in English, math, science and history, that's not acceptable.''

State officials have said loss of accreditation would not result in a state takeover of a school or loss of state funds. Instead, they predict that it would trigger community action to improve the school.

The proposal to make sex ed and elementary guidance optional dominated a final round of state hearings on the accreditation revisions over the summer. A majority of speakers - including teachers, parents and counselors - said they wanted to keep the mandates, state education department officials said.

Yet during the public comment period, which ended last month, the department reported that 9,046 of the 14,822 people - or more than 60 percent - who issued oral or written comments opposed the guidance and sex-ed mandates. Nearly all that number - 8,751 - were signatures on petitions sent by the Family Foundation, a nonprofit conservative group based in Richmond.

During the board meeting, the group's executive director, George Tryfiates, handed in a final batch of signatures, which he said raised the total to 9,752. ``Virginia parents want local option for unpopular nonacademic special interests,'' he told the board. ``And they're counting on you to withstand the political pressure from organized special interests.''

Michelle Easton, president of the board, said to Tryfiates: ``Ten thousand (signatures) sounds like a pretty good mandate to me.'' But board member Harris said the Family Foundation was also ``a special interest group.''

Harris - who in an earlier meeting vowed to abide by the public will - said Thursday: ``I weigh what people said at the hearings. We heard from the people, and they have spoken'' in support of elementary guidance.

``To make this a wishy-washy situation (by removing the requirement) takes away from the importance of students having that kind of support,'' Harris said. ``I wish the board would have some kind of compassion for them.''

But Easton said after the meeting: ``We are taking a neutral position on sex ed and guidance counseling and allowing the school systems to make the decisions.''

But Virginia will be only the 14th state that doesn't require AIDS education, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a private group in New York.

If local school divisions decide to stop offering sex education, ``you're talking about leaving students in the dark,'' said Irma Hinkle, education director for the Tidewater AIDS Crisis Taskforce in Norfolk. Too many students, she said, still believe myths that they can get AIDS from using glasses or dishes. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

Highlights KEYWORDS: SEX EDUCATION

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