DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 1997           TAG: 9710290630

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: DECISION '97

SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  121 lines

SCHOOL BOARD CHIEFS FAVOR BEYER'S PLAN FOR EDUCATION

Increase the number of Virginia's teachers or raise the salaries of those already in the classroom.

Those are the main options the two candidates for governor, Republican James S. Gilmore III and Democrat Donald S. Beyer Jr., have laid out for improving public education.

For local school decision-makers, it's an easy call. Four of the five chairmen of South Hampton Roads city school boards said this week that they'd prefer Beyer's plan for teacher raises. One said both plans had equal merit.

``If you improve people's pay, that's something that would touch every single professional in the system,'' said the Rev. Mark A. Croston Sr., chairman of Suffolk's School Board. ``Everyone would have a desire to do a better job in the classroom.''

The trouble with Gilmore's plan to add 4,000 elementary teachers across the state, most said, is that many schools are overcrowded. ``If you were to give us 4,000 more teachers, I'm not sure what we'd be able to do with them because of lack of space,'' said Anita O. Poston, chairwoman of Norfolk's School Board.

Barbara B. Head in Chesapeake and David I. Joyner in Portsmouth said they, too, thought Beyer's plan would do more to improve education.

``I can't choose,'' Robert F. Hagans Jr., the Virginia Beach chairman, said. ``To me, both of them are important. I'd like to see our teachers get raises and I'd like to see class sizes reduced.''

But some wish the candidates would focus on other issues - such as the need for more money for school construction and renovation. ``Both of the candidates have been a disappointment in terms of how they've addressed what I see as the most critical need, and that's the infrastructure,'' Poston said.

``We've got an awful lot of old buildings that are crumbling, that are not air-conditioned, that are physically not conducive to a modern education environment,'' she said. ``If there are no outlets in the rooms, we couldn't plug in the computers, even if we had them.''

Head also would like to see more talk about helping cities pay for ``unfunded mandates,'' which range from special education to the state's toughened standards of accreditation.

Not everyone in education is unhappy with the candidates' stances.

Alan Arroyo, dean of the School of Education at Regent University, praised both platforms: ``I'll be totally honest with you: I think they are really good ideas. I think we need to do both.''

But Eric Hanushek, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Rochester, predicted that the options would have little effect on students.

``Neither policy is very sensible,'' said Hanushek, who prefers spending money on incentives for schools and teachers who have raised student achievement. His advice is to ``choose the lowest-cost one, because neither of them is going to work.''

The centerpiece of Beyer's education plan is to raise teacher's salaries by $3,000 over the next four years to reach the national average. In 1995-96, the last period for which statistics are available, the average was $34,755 in Virginia and $37,846 in the nation.

Gilmore wants to hire up to 4,000 teachers to reduce class sizes in elementary schools. Each school would get up to five new teachers.

Across-the-board raises would cost the state $400 million, Beyer says. Gilmore says his proposal would cost half as much.

Both proposals would require school systems to contribute substantial amounts. It's not clear which would cost them more. Beyer says the raises would require $300 million from school systems. The cost under Gilmore's plan has not been calculated.

The state has no statistics measuring the range of class sizes in school districts. Parents and teachers routinely complain that classes are too large.

Becky McKenna's daughter, Amanda, is in third grade at Churchland Primary School in Portsmouth. Amanda's class last month began with 33 students. It's down to about 25, which McKenna thinks is still too large. She likes Gilmore's idea.

``The smaller class sizes do benefit the kids more,'' McKenna said. ``It's not so disruptive; the teacher is not having to spend most of their time disciplining the kids.''

But school board leaders say they have made strides in reducing class sizes, through local efforts and a statewide initiative, especially in high-poverty areas.

Head also wonders about the quality of the newcomers: ``We have very good teachers now. I don't know about the 4,000 that would be hired later on.''

The raises could help systems attract better candidates and increase the odds of keeping the good teachers they have, Portsmouth's Joyner said.

And as the state toughens teacher licensing requirements and demands they cover more material under the new Standards of Learning, the teachers ought to be rewarded, Croston, of Suffolk, said.

``They have to become better and better,'' he said. ``But how can we take a professional like this and tell them you're going to be better and better, and then not come back on the other side. That's how the American economy works. If you've got to be better, we have to make sure we compensate you for doing a better job.''

Yet the tougher standards also make it crucial to reduce class size, said Arroyo, from Regent. ``With kids varying in skill level, it's going to be important for a teacher to have as much individualized attention as possible,'' he said.

There appears to be little research on the correlation between teacher pay and student performance. The effects of class size have been more closely studied, but the results have been mixed.

A study by two professors at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro found that a Tennessee initiative to reduce class sizes worked: Students in the smaller classes had statistically significant gains in achievement. The effect was magnified for low-income and minority students.

But Hanushek, the Rochester researcher, said that less than 15 percent of the 300 studies on class size that he's reviewed show significant impact on student achievement. It only makes a difference, he said, if the size is reduced to 15 or fewer students.

As for the raises, Hanushek said, they would attract more people to teaching, but there's no guarantee they'd be good teachers.

Hanushek's final analysis: ``The policies being proposed here don't strike me as good leadership. They strike me as maybe good politics, because everybody is excited about education. But they're not going to improve student performance.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

BEYER WANTS to raise Virginia's average teacher salary by about

$3,000.

GILMORE WANTS to add 4,000 elementary school teachers to reduce

class sizes.

SCHOOL OFFICIALS SAY they would rather have new or renovated

buildings.

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