Virginia Studies Ways to Make the Grade After Raising the Bar

As California and other states press for better performance from public schools, they may soon discover a lesson that Virginia learned this year the hard way: If you raise academic expectations, prepare at first for failure.

Virginia, like California, has adopted detailed new benchmarks for what students should know from grade to grade in English, mathematics, history and science. Here they call them “Standards of Learning.”

But in the first round of testing to check whether enough students are meeting those standards, more than 97% of Virginia schools flunked. A mere 39 of about 1,800 scored high enough to dodge the threat of eventually losing state accreditation. By 2004, high school students who fail the tests will not get a diploma. By 2007, schools that do not shape up will lose their accreditation.

In California, students are scheduled to begin taking their first exams Monday on the state’s own academic standards for English and math. Next year they also will tackle new tests in history and science. Experts say that the California standards are comparable to Virginia’s and, in some respects, probably tougher.

Schools May Be Caught Unprepared

K. Gwen Stephens, California’s director of standards, curriculum and assessment, who has tracked the Virginia situation closely, said that California parents may not know what is about to hit them. “I’ve been worried it’s going to be a very similar experience,” Stephens said. “I don’t think they’re prepared yet at all.”

The same could be said in many other states as school reforms geared to “accountability” take root nationwide. The American Federation of Teachers found in a survey last year that 47 states have, or plan to have, tests in sync with new academic standards, up from 33 in 1995. But only a handful of states exact tough penalties for poor performance on the tests, in part because schools and teachers have only begun to adapt.

Virginia education officials, stung by newspaper headlines in January disclosing the high initial failure rate, contend that their schools will make major strides now that they have gotten a wake-up call.

“I can’t tell you everybody’s happy about this, because they’re not,” said Cameron M. Harris, Virginia’s assistant superintendent for assessment and reporting. “But the attitude is, we’re going to move forward now for the sake of the kids--not for the sake of the press coverage. If this is what it takes to put student achievement on the front burner, I’m all for it.”

Some critics say the results prove only that the state has not given schools enough resources--including new textbooks, workbooks and teacher-training sessions--or time to allow them a fair shot at a passing grade. The standards were adopted in 1995 and the tests first given last spring.

Drawing on a popular metaphor for the school standards movement--”raising the bar”--Frank E. Barham, executive director of the Virginia School Boards Assn., said that state officials have set the “bar” for academic success about the right height. But he added: “What they didn’t do was give me enough running room to get up enough speed to jump over it. It’s like asking me to pole vault and not giving me a pole.”

Others, noting that many schools fell just short, complained that Virginia set unrealistically high thresholds for students to pass the exams and for schools to avoid state sanctions. Such thresholds have not yet been established in California, which is phasing in its tests gradually while using the Stanford 9 skills exams. The issue is likely to rouse debate in a state with 5.7 million students of vastly varying abilities.

Still others complained that the tests do not fully measure quality of education.

“The stakes are way too high,” said Edward Kelly, superintendent in Prince William County, southwest of Washington. Not one of Kelly’s schools, in a system with 52,000 students, made the state’s grade. “Let’s say you have a high school whose average SAT scores are above 1100, with a high percentage of students going to the better colleges. And then you turn around and say, ‘Oh, but 70% of your kids didn’t pass [the state tests] so you’re not an accredited school?’ There’s some inconsistency there.”

Under Virginia rules, by 2007 schools must have 70% of their students achieve a passing grade, in most cases, to avoid losing state accreditation. Officials have not yet defined what losing accreditation would mean beyond requiring schools to take corrective action. Elsewhere, some states allow for personnel shake-ups or state takeover.

California lawmakers are considering whether to strip certain powers from school boards that oversee persistently failing campuses, as part of what would be one of the most extensive school accountability reforms in state history.

To many educators and parents here, fearful of sullying the image of their schools and their neighborhoods, the mere denial of accreditation sounds ominous.

Days after the scores came out, state officials took steps to quell such fears. Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore III found an extra $3.3 million in his budget to enable schools to administer the next round of testing later in the school year, on the premise that teachers could pack in more lessons beforehand. The governor and the president of the state board of education also agreed not to place the first year’s scores on high school student transcripts. And state officials said that more plans are in the works to help struggling schools.

Most Virginia schools are racing to upgrade their curricula, assuming that the standards and tests are here to stay. Two in the suburban Richmond community of Henrico County offer pointers on how educators are facing the challenge.

Ridge Elementary School was one of the 39 statewide that aced the tests in year one. Local school administrators said that the performance was a pleasant surprise, defying the common wisdom that family income levels predict academic success or failure. More than a third of the school’s 330 students qualify for federal lunch subsidies. Principal Cheryl Thomas said that her game plan is simple: Weave the academic standards into lesson plans, teacher training, parent-teacher conferences and any other opportunity.

Weekly progress reports on all Ridge students are kept on laptop computers. In a gesture of public accountability, teachers check off standards students have learned one by one on bulletin boards in the school hallways. On a recent morning outside Sarah Fernald’s third-grade classroom, a visitor could quickly determine that the class had studied “knowledge of animal adaptation for survival [hibernation, camouflage, migration],” which is state science standard #3.4, but had not yet learned to “recall multiplication and division facts through the nines table,” math standard #3.9.

The school also puts a premium on teaching students, even the youngest, how to take standard tests. With so much on the line, knowing how to fill in a score sheet with a No. 2 pencil may be just as important for third-graders as knowing how to punctuate a sentence.

“Communities want to know that their school’s going to get accredited,” Thomas said. “And they’re not going to wait seven years to see that happen. They want it now.”

‘We Must Not Become Discouraged’

The same urgency prevails at Henrico High School, which serves a lower-income neighborhood and which posted far worse scores. Nine of 10 students in the school failed the new mathematics tests. There were also dismal results in history and science. The one relatively bright spot: About half the students passed their English tests.

A newly installed principal, Harold V. Lawson, is waging an all-out battle to persuade students, teachers and parents that success is possible. The new school slogan, printed on buttons Lawson hands out, is, “I Believe.” The roadside marquee used for school announcements quotes Booker T. Washington: “We must not become discouraged.”

Lawson has held several meetings with parents to inform them of the weak scores. There are new classes for parents who want to help their children with math homework but do not know how. Faculty task forces have drawn up plans for improvement. Students who flounder in algebra and geometry are getting extra tutoring on Saturdays.

Perhaps most important, students are told every day that the tests matter. That is a difficult message to get across at this point because the tests do not yet count toward graduation requirements. But it appears to be sinking in with some students.

“I keep hearing that here at Henrico High School we need to step it up,” said Curtis Broadie Jr., 18, a senior, who has formed a club for students with at least a C average to spread the word that it is cool to hit the books.

David Hatch, 17, another senior, said: “I heard that in a few years if the scores don’t go up, the high school won’t get accredited. That will make me look bad. People will look at me like I’m a nobody.”