Higher Standards

An editorial supports raising the bar for students graduating from high school. Graduating seniors often take remedial coursework as freshmen in college and the low percentages of minorities applying to four-year universities are some of the pieces of evidence used to support this position.

While I, too, would like to see students better prepared for university life and coursework, I also see some concerning factors not discussed.

I firmly believe that elective courses often keep students in school and reveal to students their passions. By increasing the number of core classes (according to the article: "English, math, science, social studies and language") students take, the number of electives available to them would decrease.

Also, the public and school officials must be prepared for failure rates to rise initially. In any system when standards are raised, a period of time ensues where success levels drop and then they begin to recover. However, success rates may never reach previous levels.

Academic success is a social and community dilemma. The increase in single-parent households, the attitudes about school, the socio-economic status of households (the issue of poverty in general), and more affect student achievement.

It seems as though every solution to perceived academic shortcomings is conducted entirely within the schools, even though numerous factors outside of the school setting greatly affect student success--arguably even more so than what occurs within the classroom.

Where is the Money?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau the United States has a current population of 303,124,730 and according to the NPP the Iraq War debt is about $481 billion.

Based on the population in Washington State, our share is approximately $10.4 billion. This could be used, at $58,000 per teacher, to hire almost 180,000 teachers.

Obviously this is unrealistic, but I feel it does highlight how much money is not going to education that could be. Even 5% of that money could hire 9,000 new teachers.

Class size is a continuing problem in my district and particularly in the high school, and I definitely hope this issue rises to the forefront of budgeting decisions this year.

As I mentioned on a blog response earlier this week, one of our assistant superintendents repeatedly states that class size does not greatly affect achievement results at the high school. He says this despite mandating classes of 20 or fewer students for remedial and state-test prep classes and encouraging smaller AP class sizes.

I used my classes two years ago to show how the same course I taught to two classes, one of 18 students and one of 28 students, showed a major contrast in overall achievement. The smaller class had a 10% higher average than the larger class. Plus, the smaller class had no failures.

Did I mention the superintendent sent his kids to a private school where class sizes are half of ours? Hmmm...

Online Alternatives

In this Oregonian article the successes of an online school are touted as a potential solution for students looking for a new mean of success.

And it works for some.

Over 1800 students are enrolled in this online school with high levels of success in reading, scores comparable to public schools in math and reading, and special needs students with passing rates near their fully-abled peers. Sounds wonderful.

Except there's a catch: "Connections Academy is off-limits for any student who can't arrange for a learning coach to be home with them for five or six hours, five days a week."

I would contend that any student who is getting assistance online and who has a full-time tutor is going to perform quite well. This signals to me children of middle to upper-middle class parents who normally outperform their peers in public schools anyway.

While I like the opportunities afforded (pun intended--sorry) these students, I do believe the comparisons are a bit disingenuous.

My high school uses online learning to allow credit retrieval, but we encounter a few major difficulties with normal hours online credit retrieval:
1. The curriculum is not aligned with ours.
2. The rigor falls far short.
3. The course requirements (of the course being made up) are not required of the online students.
4. The students regularly finish the retrieved credit in less than six weeks (with no real plan for the other 12 weeks).
5. The students have a high failure rate in the next teacher-led course in the sequence.

However, we are seeing some successes with Moodle. This Blackboard styled online system allows teachers to require the same knowledge as our normal classroom setting courses, but also allows the work to be submitted and worked on online. It's not a cure-all, but it does greatly improve the online systems and programs we have used in the past, especially the current credit retrieval programs.

I would love to see online learning take hold in my community, but I also believe the rigor and content requirements must be included. In addition, I think teachers from our school (preferred) or teachers with the skills and and background in the content area (who understand our aligned curricula and become part of our departments) must instruct the online courses.

This requires support from the district in dollars, time, resources, and people, so we'll see how serious it is to provide online classes with the rigor and high standards of the regular classroom.

Up Next

I get to start some great units to begin the new year:

Am. Lit.: Ray Bradbury stories and science fiction
Soph. Honors: The Princess Bride
College in the H.S.: The Red Badge of Courage
Mythology: Norse mythology

It's going to be a fun finish to the semester! Plus, I only have six students (out of over 150) who I worry won't pass. All can, but they need to buckle down and improve in a couple areas. I'm hopeful.

Do We Set Students Up for Failure?

An interesting debate taking place between district administrators and high school teachers in my district is the effect of the system on student achievement. The primary topics are: how advanced learners are treated and the reasons for a high freshman failure rate.

A growing trend for Freshman Honors classes at the high school is the higher number of students in the D and F grade range. One teacher in my department recently had two of her children pass through the middle schools (one has graduated and one has entered her Sophomore year), and she constantly complains about the lack of rigor for advanced students in our middle schools. Her children were essentially segregated, along with two or three others, to work on independent projects for three years without any direct instruction in English. In her opinion, she believes her children lost English language and literary analysis instruction because no advanced program is provided and the amount of practice aimed at passing standardized tests is increasing.

During articulation meetings where English teachers from all grades gathered, teachers in the middle schools related that they spend approximately 20% of their time giving and grading assessment practices aimed at passing our state test, the WASL. Because of this enormous amount of time used for test prep, the students are losing time studying other content areas, especially the arts, and losing direct instruction in all content areas. Our district instructional leader wants WASL prep to be the curriculum and has created that structure in the middle schools. In fact, no novels or texts over twenty pages in length are used in the middle schools according to a middle school teacher. It's the district's dirty little secret, she says.

In addition to this inadequacy, teachers are beginning to see more students struggling as Freshmen. The reasons, according to many of the high school teachers, are:

1) too much time is used to prepare for the state test. Last year our high school English Department charted grades for freshmen and saw that more students were falling into the D/F range than ever before. 1.6 English teachers are needed just to teach students repeating a failed English course.

2) even though the district labels Freshmen as the "most at-risk" students in the district, Freshmen English and Math classes are maxed out at 32 per class. When my department raised this dilemma and reminded the assistant superintendent we were supposed to be the district's "number one priority" this year, he said there's no money to lower those numbers. He further stated that he did not feel that class size was a major factor in student success, even though he (and the others superintendents) mandated that remedial courses be capped at twenty students. Of course, he failed to mention that the district is front-loading money to special programs until a levy passes.

3) students are not held accountable for passing classes until high school (9th grade). Students have been socially promoted for eight or nine years, which creates a mentality that the work is not important and passing courses are not necessary to pass to graduate. Since the students don't understand how credits work, they often don't realize they must earn credits to graduate. Plus, students don't understand that courses at the high school are sequenced; the first must be passed to take the second.

4) systemic interventions for students are only really available after school. Many students help their families by working or babysitting and are unable to spend extra time at the high school, so interventions are needed during the normal school day, built into student schedules. This may be in the form of study halls, tutorial periods, writing and math labs, etc.

5) students are only required to pass the state test during 10th grade, not at the 4th or 7th grade testing years. Again, this creates a mental state which reinforces apathy about the test. "It doesn't count" is often heard by students because it never has counted for them.

Obviously, a better avenue of conversation is needed between the high school and the district office, but nothing indicates this will occur. We are typically told to go "teach" better and things will improve, despite some glaring unmet needs. I'm hopeful that this year will springboard a new working relationship with the district office, one that fosters collaboration and not just consternation.