02.11.02

By Geoffrey Rowland

It is an issue that will not disappear.

Every year, it seems, the General Assembly struggles with the state's Standards of Learning -- the basic skills tests that determine whether students may graduate and whether schools are accredited.

This year turned out to be no exception. And the legislators have already insured that the SOLs will be on their agenda for the 2003 session.

The specific issue, to be considered next session, is a bill that would reduce the value of the SOL tests on gaining accreditation. This bill would allow the commonwealth to consider other factors, such as the dropout rate, when determining whether a school should be accredited.

Delegate L. Karen Darner, D-Arlington, is sponsoring the proposal, one of many SOL bills before the House and Senate this session. Darner has asked that her legislation be continued to the next session.

"There is a new federal law that has a large portion on accreditation of schools," Darner said. "This law does not go into place until next year, so we feel that it is probably better to wait until next years session to try the bill again."

The bill is designed to help schools that may have lower Standards of Learning test scores than other schools have a possibility of receiving accreditation by doing other things. Right now, the decision on whether or not a school in the state of Virginia is accredited is completely correlated to the scores that the students of that school receive on the Standards of Learning tests.

"With this bill," Darner said, "We are going to try and make other things count towards the accreditation of schools. One thing is the dropout rate at those schools. Some schools may have great SOL scores, but they have a high dropout rate."

Currently, the accreditation procedure would accredit those schools with high dropout rates, as long as the students that stay in the school are scoring highly on the SOL tests.

Opponents of the bill think that it may take too much emphasis away from the Standards of Learning test.

"I am just not sure," Delegate Jay O'Brien, R-Clifton, said when reviewing the bill last year, "if this bill will actually accomplish anything. It seems that SOL scores are going up right now."

Last year, the bill failed to get through the Senate despite overwhelming approval from the House of Delegates.

The Virginia School Boards Association, the main lobbyist group on the commonwealth's education agendas, has no formal stance yet because they do not know much about the upcoming federal provisions or the changes that may be in the bill after it's continued to next year.

The newly appointed secretary of education, Dr. Belle S. Wheelan, spoke with the House Committee on Education last week and said a couple of things about the legislation.

"I think that we have a lot of work to do," Wheelan said, "in getting all of our schools accredited and there may be (other ways) to do that without focusing solely on the Standards of Learning criteria."

There are multiple bills that dealing with the Standards of Learning and the criteria for which a school gains accreditation, that are probably going to be continued to next session, including a very similar Senate proposal.

"Many of the legislators," Darner said, "feel that we should wait to see what the federal (government) does with these issues and with schooling issues before voting on many of these bills. It would not be a good idea to work so hard on some of these bills only to be told by Washington that they are no good and that there needs to be even more changes."

Many feel that with Gov. Mark Warner taking office that there will be more of an emphasis on the education system in the upcoming years.

"I'm not sure how it will affect these areas directly," Delegate Mitch Van Yahres, D-Charlottesville, said during an Education Committee meeting. "But I'm sure that the governor will fight to give Virginians the best possible education that he can."

Darner will place the bill before the House next session, and she thinks that it may have a good chance of getting through both sides next session.

"Well, hopefully," Darner said, "next session we can push this thing after making a couple of minor changes and making sure that it follows the federal mandate. We will be fighting a battle to try and get this through next year. It was my decision to carry over the bill, and I think that next session we will have a solid chance with it."

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