81. By now it’s hardly news that as education has risen to the
top of the national agenda, a great wave of school reform has focused on two
related objectives: more-stringent academic standards and increasingly
rigorous accountability for both students and schools. 82.
In state after state, legislatures, governors, and state boards, supported by
business leaders, have imposed tougher requirements in math, English, science,
and other fields, together with new tests by which the performance of both
students and schools is to be judged. In some places students have already
been denied diplomas or held back in grade if they failed these tests. 83. In
some states funding for individual schools and for teachers’ and principals’
salaries -- and in some, such as Virginia, the accreditation of schools -- will
depend on how well students do on tests. More than half the states now
require tests for student promotion or graduation. But a
backlash has begun. 84. In Virginia this spring parents,
teachers, and school administrators opposed to the state’s Standard of Learning
assessments, established in 1998, inspired a flurry_ of bills in the
legislature that called for revising the tests of their status as
unavoidable hurdles for promotion and graduation. One bill would also have
required that each new member of the sate board of education "take the eighth
grade Standards of Learning assessments in English, mathematics, science, and
social sciences" and that "the results of such assessments.., be publicly
reported." 85. None of the bills passed, but there’s little
doubt that if the system isn’t revised and the state’s high failure rates don’t
decrease by 2004, when the first Virginia senior may be denied diplomas, the
political pressure will intensify. Meanwhile, some parents are talking about
Massachusetts-style boycotts.