Virginia would require high school juniors to pass the same civics exam required of hopeful U.S. citizens, if a lawmaker can find support for a bill he has filed for the 2015 General Assembly session.
Del. Richard P. “Dickie” Bell, R-Staunton, wants to amend the state code to make a passing score on the test be a requirement for graduation.
“It seems like knowing about our government is a good idea,” said Bell, a retired high school teacher.
He said student command of civics is “not very pretty” and that getting six out of 10 questions correct is not a reasonable barrier to graduation.
“I know there’s a call for less testing, so maybe we could replace the 11th-grade history SOL with this,” he said. “I think knowledge of our government is more important than what happened in the 15th century.”
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Bell’s bill is one of at least eight education-related measures pre-filed so far by members of the House of Delegates for the next session. There also are 16 education bills carried over from previous sessions: eight in the House, four in the Senate and four joint.
The other new bills cover Standards of Learning reform, arming school security officers with nonlethal weapons, and abolishing the unfunded school takeover district championed by former Gov. Bob McDonnell.
“I’m very excited about SOL reform,” said Meg Gruber, president of the Virginia Education Association.
She said she was looking forward to more detailed descriptions regarding some of the bills, such as the one about school security.
“The big question there is, who’s a school security officer? Is it the police resource officer assigned to a school, or is it a school employee? We don’t want heavily armed forces,” she said. “But we also don’t want people to not have the proper tools for their job.”
On the issue of Bell’s proposed civics exam, Gruber did not hesitate.
“We’ll come out in opposition to that one,” she said. “We’re not in favor of increasing any standardized testing hoop.”
She said the topic already was part of the state curriculum, so there’s no need for “another barrier test.”
Among the eight new bills:
- House Bill 1306, sponsored by Bell, would require 11th-graders to pass the civics portion of the naturalization test administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
- House Bill 1302, sponsored by Del. Peter F. Farrell, R-Henrico, would allow students at all levels access to same-year retakes on SOL exams they fail. The practice currently is allowed only for high school students. It is one of the 12 recommendations from a state SOL reform committee.
- House Bill 1309, from
Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, would arm school security officers with batons, stun guns or pepper spray. - House Bill 1299, also sponsored by Bell, would eliminate references to the Opportunity Educational Institution — McDonnell’s takeover school district — and gives power for turnaround efforts to the State Board of Education. It would allow the state to control funding, personnel and instructional practices in such schools.
Bell said McDonnell’s Opportunity Educational Institution “was maybe not the right idea, but it was the best we had at the time.”
His bill, he said, would accomplish essentially the same thing but in a different framework.
“I feel like the state has got to find a way to take schools that constantly fail out of the hands of these districts,” he said.
He said he wasn’t expecting quick action on the idea.
“I think it’s safe to say this is a first attempt,” he said.
The holdover bills include ones about charter school funding and charter school creation; dealing with cloud-based technology in the storage of student records; reworking the state’s formula for funding schools; and studying the state’s preschool program.