V.I. School board members met with Sen. Wayne James Saturday to discuss major changes to the territory’s public school system—changes that could take effect within as little as two years.
James, who chairs the Committee on Education, Youth, and Culture, met with board members to discuss the Education Policy Improvement Act. The bill changes the legal drop-out age from 16 to 18; it also proposes mandatory proficiency testing for students in grades four, six, eight and 12. Students who do not pass the test would not be allowed to advance to the next grade. The bill also calls for a special educational focus on V.I. cultural history.
“Children don’t learn what we learn,” James told board members. He said students do not know multiplication or long division –that he was told it was no longer relevant. He also said he has noticed that children are lacking in basic grammar skills.
Board members all agreed that major changes were needed but voiced concerns about some of the details. School board president Winona Hendricks told James that she thought education reform was so important that the changes should take place in a year – not the two years that he was recommending.
“When you have time, things get put on the back burner,” she said. But she told James that she thought that giving students just one test at each mandated grade level would not be sufficient to evaluate how students are learning.
Rather, she said, there should be a whole battery of tests to gauge different educational aspects. She also suggested that there be more focus on teachers, who, she said, are most important in the education process.
“I support your intent,” board vice president Keith Richards told James, “but I have questions about whether the language will have the desired outcome.” Richards said that it would be important for lawmakers to spell out precisely what role the school board would have in creating and executing the testing, and what role the Department of Education would have.
He said past attempts at establishing the kind of testing James is proposing have gotten bogged down in confusion because that distinction had not been made.
School Board Secretary Cheryl Francis wanted to know what process would be put in place prior to testing to get students already in school, such as high school seniors about to graduate, prepared for the testing.
While James acknowledged that “some children … are going to be caught in the crossfire,” Francis argued that students should be prepared anyway. Board members countered that it sounded as though he was punishing the students and said measures should be taken so that students would not be left behind by the changes.
James told board members he has not laid out what specifically would be tested, but that basic math, reading, grammar and composition were all important to him. He said he has more ideas for coming legislation – including a bill that would move seventh- and eighth-graders back to elementary schools, a bill mandating that graduation requirements be the same for both day and night schools, and a bill that would require teachers to hold a degree in the subject they teach. However, the legislation is still in the very beginning stages, and there is still much work to be done.
His suggestions were met with sounds of approval from board members, who said that some of his ideas are similar to subjects that they want to tackle as well.
“We are in sync in terms of our thinking,” Hendricks told him. She said that the time to begin making changes is now.
“There is the adage," she said, "‘If not now, when?’”
