Were tests made easier?

Some critics still saying exam's detail makes learning trivial

Virginia's new history and social science Standards of Learning, adopted Friday, will make it easier for more students to understand the subject and pass the SOL tests, said state officials and some educators.

Kirk T. Schroder, president of the Virginia Board of Education, said the 41-page document of revised standards was "significantly improved in many areas over the old document."

"It already has wide acceptance from educators, curriculum specialists, scholars, parents and citizens," he said. The new standards are expected to be in place at all state public schools by this fall.

On the other hand, the standards still are so detailed that they reduce the study of history to a trivialized list of names and events, said Roxanne Grossman, of the grassroots group Parents Across Virginia United to Reform the SOLs.

"The basic problem is still the basic problem: There is still too much weight being put on the test," Grossman said. "If there was not so much weight put on the test, you wouldn't have people fearing, and rightly so, that every single item that is not in [the standards] will not get taught."

Several educators have said they generally were satisfied with the new standards for kindergarten through third grade. The only major sticking point for some was the inclusion of the early West African empire of Mali in third grade. Several teachers, both black and white, questioned Mali and were concerned they would not be able to find textbooks that reference that civilization.

Thelma Williams-Tunstall, Richmond public schools' social studies curriculum coordinator and a member of the board-appointed committee that revised the standards, said Mali was needed because black students would perform better in the classroom by seeing themselves in history. She said white students already see themselves in ancient Greece and Rome, through Europe of the Middle Ages and into modern times.

"As a black American, I think it's something that's past due. [The study of Mali] focuses on economic history and draws young people to focus on history," Williams-Tunstall said. "If we teach history in the 21st century, we need to move to the 20th century, and we can't do that without reflecting on where we came from."

The new standards shift the focus of the Civil War in both fourth and fifth grades. The new standards move Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart from fourth to fifth grade. Williams-Tunstall said that will allow fourth-graders to concentrate on the Civil War's effects on Virginia specifically, while fifth-graders will see how the war played out in both the Union and Confederacy.

The world history courses for eighth and ninth grades will now be divided at A.D. 1500 instead of A.D. 1000. Teachers felt that was a more natural break because 1000 was still firmly in the Middle Ages, while 1500 saw a shift in emphasis from Europe to the New World. The change also will allow ninth-grade teachers more time to teach 20th-century history, Schroder said.

The board eliminated several items from 11th-grade Virginia and U.S. history after teachers said the section was overloaded.

Among the deleted items were references to the War of 1812 and the Monroe Doctrine, which board member Mark Christie said would be addressed in the upcoming revision to the History and Social Science SOL Teacher Resource Guide. Also eliminated were references to totalitarianism and aggression in the 1930s and U.S. policy toward the Middle East, South Africa and other African nations since World War II, because, he noted, the world history standards already cover those areas in detail.

"It was not an easy road, but everyone was heard and many considerations were taken into account," Schroder said of the nine-month standards revision process. "I've seen history taught firsthand in many classrooms, and there were many practical problems that needed to be solved. I believe we solved most of them."

Next for the board-appointed committees is revising the Teacher Resource Guide. Schroder said the document, which contains all content subject to testing by the SOL exams, should be ready for distribution to schools throughout Virginia by July 1, after the public has had opportunity to comment.