By 2004, students must pass a battery of state tests in four subject areas in order to graduate. Under the state's accountability plan, a school will lose its accreditation unless 70 percent of its students pass the tests in four areas by 2007. Staffed by about 15 education department employees and located in less populous areas around the state, the three centers field dozens of calls from local educators each week. To respond to far-flung requests and advertise their presence, many of the centers' workers log hundreds of miles in visits to schools each month. Innovative Setup Last month, Mr. Hughes and his colleagues drove three hours from the center in Harrisonburg to speak to educators in the town of Marion about improving earth-science instruction.
More help is on the way.
Other states have set up state-sponsored education centers that offer professional development for teachers. Some states, such as Maryland and North Carolina, dispatch crisis teams on occasion to assist low-performing schools. But Virginia seems to be the only state that has set up permanent, decentralized centers devoted year round to improving student performance on standards-based tests. Breaking the Mold Sharing knowledge comes easily to Dorinda Pinkerton, an algebra teacher in central Virginia's Albemarle County. At the recent seminar in the school library in Madison, a small town in north central Virginia, she tells her colleagues they need to think outside the traditional algebraic box.