My travels as of late bring me to the beautiful state of Virginia, site of my future home. I am currently searching for a teaching position in Virginia and will be attending job fairs nearly every weekend in March. One thing I’m learning from this process is the differences in education philosophy from New York to Virginia. Two things stand out in my mind: the absence of a Regents exam in Virginia and the structure of the school districts.
While Virginia does not have the Regents exams as we know them in New York, they do have what they call Standard of Learning (SOL) exams. I am interested in learning more about these exams and how they affect the curriculum. For the English component, students must pass two End of Course exams, one in writing and one in Reading/Literature and Research. I’ve viewed samples of these and they seem to focus more on comprehension, grammar and elements of literature. It seems like it would be easier to integrate into daily lessons than New York’s Regents exams, which require an enormous amount of class time dedicated to “teaching the test.”
The structure of school districts came up not only in my job search but also in seeing how low the property taxes are in Virginia. Coming from Long Island where property taxes are outrageous I was shocked to find that we would be paying less than $1000 a year in taxes. Part of that is because of the way school districts are zoned in Virginia. Unlike Long Island where practically every town has its own district, in Virginia the districts are county-wide. This allows them to cut down on administrative costs and other costs associated with running the schools. I am still amazed by this and can’t wait to go to some of these job fairs to learn more about the school system in Virginia.
