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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Education Forum Seeks Comment On Reforms

Carla K. Johnson Staff writer

Sheila Bell wants students to remember more about history than Mesopotamia and the Pilgrims.

That’s why Bell, a Central Valley School District administrator, is helping write learning standards that will be used to measure public school students’ performance by the year 2000.

Parents, teachers and other citizens will get a chance to comment on standards in social studies, science, the arts, and health and fitness at a public forum Tuesday.

The forum starts at 6 p.m. at Spokane Falls Community College, Building 17. It will be a teleconference originating in Seattle and linking audiences in eight other sites.

The Commission on Student Learning, established by the Legislature in 1993 to oversee the improvement of learning in the state, is gathering opinions before revising and approving the standards next month.

Last year, the commission approved standards in reading, writing, communication and math. The commission also is creating a $4 million testing system to hold schools accountable.

“A lot of kids won’t meet the standards,” said commission Executive Director Terry Bergeson. “We are raising the bar.”

Committees of educators, parents, business people and students wrote the standards that will be reviewed Tuesday.

The committees already received comments and criticisms from focus groups, dozens of organizations and at a statewide meeting of educators.

“We’ve gotten a tremendous amount of feedback in the past six months,” said Scott Stowell, a Spokane School District administrator who chairs the science committee. “Our task as a committee is to respond to that feedback.”

Issues that may arise at Tuesday’s meeting include:

Do schools have enough money to teach the arts as completely as the standards suggest?

“People have asked how schools and districts will be able to afford to see that all children have a healthy exposure to the arts,” said commission spokeswoman Lois Matheson.

Do the standards contain a good balance between U.S. and world history?

“We heard there was not enough U.S. history. Now what we’re hearing is that we went the opposite way and there’s not enough about the global society we live in,” said Central Valley’s Bell, who sits on the social studies committee.

Should health and fitness standards be a requirement for graduation?

“I have real concern about the state of Washington assessing health behaviors,” said Joanne McCann, a Washington Parents Coalition for Academic Excellence board member who has monitored the standards process.

“I think it’s important to exercise, eat well and do that sort of thing. I’m not sure that should be a requirement for graduation from high school.”

Are the standards clearly written so everyone, not just educators, can understand them?

Writing the standards has been an exercise in translating jargon into plain English, Bergeson said.

Although the teachers on the committees are “miracle-worker kinds of people,” Bergeson said she spars with them over technical vocabulary she feels only other teachers understand.

Education reform so far has remained above partisan politics, Bergeson said.

The Legislature may extend some of the deadlines set by the Education Reform Act of 1993, but there has been no attempt to kill the law.

Voucher and charter schools initiatives in the Legislature would exempt certain state-funded schools from the new standards and tests. Since the Legislature seems unlikely to act on those initiatives, they seem headed for the November ballot.

, DataTimes MEMO: Forum The forum starts at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Spokane Falls Community College, Building 17.

Forum The forum starts at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Spokane Falls Community College, Building 17.