Progress

Progress

Continued from page 1

cent were.

Rappahannock has seen similar changes. Until a few years ago all the students who elected to take physics could be accommodated in one class section. Now two sections of physics are offered.

This year, for the first time, a third section of French I was offered to take care of the increased numbers of students choosing to take French. This is in addition to the new offering of Latin I via the electronic classroom.

A new class, Biology II, is being offered to juniors and seniors for the first time this year.

During the decade of the '80s, there was a slight increase in the average score of Virginians taking the SAT exams. In 1981-82 the average score for verbal and math combined was 888. In 1988-89 it was 902.

The percentage of students choosing to take the test has increased from 51 percent in 1982, to 59 percent in 1989. Virginia ranks 38th among the states on its average score, but 20th when adjustments :ire made for the relatively high percentage of students who choose to take the test.

In Rappahannock also more students are choosing to take the test, but as that has happened, the scores have dropped. In 1981-82, 37 percent of the students took the SAT, with an average score of 902. In 1987-88, 47 percent of the students took the test, writh an average score of 875. The results for 1988-89 have not been tabulated yet, but 52 percent took the test, and the scores were about the same, guidance counselor James Futtrell said.

During the 1980s there was also a dramatic increase mi the average teacher’s salary in Virginia. In 198182 it was $17,009, 38th in the nation and $2,267 below the national average of $19,276. In 1988-89 it was $29,056, 22nd in the nation and only $592 below the national average of $29,648.

Slightly less that half of the booklet is taken up with this litany of achievements of the ’80s. The rest is an "Agenda for th»> 1990s.”

Despite the ;ns of the past decade, as the oooklet’s preamble points out. “If Virginia’s students achieve slightly higher than the national averages, but students in the United St ites achieve belowr those in other developed nations, then Virginians are losing a competitive educational race.”

The first of the recommendations for the '90s is that all disadvantaged or “at risk” four-year-olds in Virginia (estimated at about 18,000) be enrolled in a developmental pre-kindergarten by 1995. The booklet doesn’t specify that this would take place in a public school setting, but if that is to be the case, most school systems, including Rappahannock’s, will have to answer the question, “where?”

A second recommendation is that by the year 2000, the average class size in first grade and in English classes in sixth through 12th grade be reduced to 18 students. For Rappahannock County that would mean the addition of at least one, and probably two or more English teachers, assuming that there is no further increase in enrollment.

The proposal calls for increasing emphasis and remediation and re