Civics teacher Elizabeth Dyer, working with Elliott Millan, 14, has helped her students prepare for the tests. (By Ray Lustig – The Washington Post)

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 19, 1998; Page B01

In recent days, Elizabeth Dyer has been starting off her eighth-grade civics students with a U.S. history booster shot -- sample multiple-choice questions displayed on a large computer screen.

It's not how she usually begins the class at Fairfax County's Poe Middle School, but over the next two weeks her students face a challenge: a new state social studies exam full of facts that they learned as far back as the sixth grade, a lifetime ago to a 14-year-old.

At Fairfax's Lake Braddock Middle School, civics teacher Tina Yalen said she and her colleagues "have been brainstorming all kinds of ways to get our kids ready."

"My plan is to do a major final pump-you-up exercise," she said. "It will be kind of a 'Jeopardy!' game thing, with kids in teams."

Exam fever is spreading throughout Virginia, with some parents anxious and some annoyed, some students worried and some offended, some teachers reviewing and some letting nature take its course.

The source of all this turmoil is the so-called Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, which will be administered to 375,000 Virginia public school children over the next 3 1/2 weeks. The exams, which cover English, math, science, social studies and 11 high school subjects ranging from trigonometry to world geography, are the most extensive assessment of academic skills in the state's history, and they represent a leading edge of a national movement to raise public school achievement.

The stakes are high: The test results eventually will determine which Virginia schools keep their state accreditation and which high school students graduate. And each year starting this fall, every school will be required to announce its average scores on a "report card" sent to the parents of all its students.

But most teachers interviewed, although acknowledging the need for strong statewide standards, see the tests as a major interruption in their efforts to help students complete their courses.

One of their headaches is that the tests are based on a fact-filled curriculum that the state instituted just two years ago. And although the exams will be given only to students in third, fifth and eighth grades and high school, they cover material learned in grades one through 12. That has prompted teachers to spend time reviewing old material -- or racing ahead to lessons they normally wouldn't have taught until later this spring.

Some teachers are ignoring the problem and sticking to their normal routines. At Fairfax High School last week, geometry teacher Jeff Harris shrugged off student complaints about an SOL math test that will include topics they haven't learned yet, such as logic and the volume of solids.

"I don't know why they are doing it this way," Harris said as 15-year-old sophomore Kevin Peterson pressed him on the issue. "Call the state."

At Alexandria's Minnie Howard School, ninth-grader Sylvia Glassco said she did not fear the SOL tests. But she said she was angry that her world history teacher had to halt the course at the year 1700 to go back and review everything that happened before 1000, the period covered by the SOL test her class is taking.

"It wastes time that we could be using to get further in the curriculum we are learning," she said.

Cameron Harris, the state education department official in charge of the testing program, said the exams, annoying as they may be to some, are needed to determine if students are learning what the state has spent years deciding they should know.

"It is also important for individual schools to see how well they are meeting the state standards," said Harris, an assistant state superintendent.

Students in D.C. schools also will encounter a battery of high-stakes tests, beginning tomorrow. For the first time, the results from the Stanford 9 achievement tests will determine whether some D.C. principals keep their jobs and may be used in deciding which students are promoted to the next grade. Maryland students have taken state assessment tests for several years, although state officials are developing a more rigorous high school graduation exam.

In Northern Virginia, some schools have sent descriptions of test topics to parents and have asked them to help their children study at home. Parents' reactions have differed widely.

Dyer said one father asked her for a copy of the seventh-grade history text so he could help his daughter review.

But Kathy Smith said she isn't bothering to look at the home-review materials sent by her fifth-grade son's teachers at Greenbriar West Elementary School in Fairfax.

Smith's third-grade son also appears unworried about the tests, she said, and her eighth-grade son has shown his disdain by inventing scatological renderings of the initials SOL.

"I don't see the value of all this time and effort," said Smith, a former teacher. "I don't see that it is going to improve the kids' education."

The first SOL tests, in writing and English, were given last month. James Thompson, a 16-year-old junior at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, said he was told by his teacher that the writing test would have no consequences, so he composed an essay on how he acquired a healthy disrespect for authority at the school. Teachers have told him that the upcoming SOL tests "will not affect graduation or the school or anything else," he said.

There are likely to be few penalties for students who do poorly on the exams this year. But passing the high school SOL tests will become a graduation requirement, starting with the Class of 2004. And starting in 2006, schools at which fewer than 70 percent of students pass the tests will face the loss of their state accreditation.

The state Board of Education won't decide what constitutes a passing mark until the fall, after it has studied the results of this spring's tests.

"There is some anxiety about the upcoming testing, but I think it is in large part due to the unknown," said Kathleen F. Grove, an assistant superintendent in the Arlington County schools.

Grove has taped an explanation of the history and purpose of the SOLs, which has been shown on Arlington cable television. But she has not encouraged teachers to enlist parents in the preparation process and has put together review packets only for eighth-grade social studies, where the need to remind students of their sixth- and seventh-grade history lessons imposes a special burden.

Some eighth-graders were so upset about the review of old history lessons that they put the matter on the agenda of a statewide meeting of student government leaders in Williamsburg last month. Elliott Millan, the 14-year-old president of the Poe Middle School student government, said the delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution saying tests should not demand recall of material from previous years.

"Most kids say they forget what they learned in the sixth and seventh grades," he said.

Yalen, the civics teacher at Lake Braddock, said the tests have been a dominant force in her planning this year. She has squeezed her nine-month course into less than eight months in order to have her students ready for the SOL test this month. As for reviewing old material, "in all honesty I have been sporadic," she said. "I will have a burst, and then I will back off for a month or two."

At Poe Middle School, eighth-grader Millan said he will absorb every scrap of U.S. history Dyer can feed him, and then get a good night's sleep. "I will eat my breakfast," he said, "and I won't think of anything else, just concentrate on doing good."