Posted on 10/20/2008 9:37:45 AM PDT by prolifefirst
A wide variety of concerns and perspectives marked a sometimes disorganized and rancorous PTSA forum about mixed-level classes, scheduled in the wake of a surprise change to the senior English program which eliminated the honors-only level.
Over 150 people attended the forum, "Mixed-Level and Honors-Only Classes at ETHS: The Past, The Present and The Future" on Oct. 6.
Superintendent Eric Witherspoon provided a backdrop to the discussion through a review of the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, the District's recent positive performance against those requirements and the comprehensive restructuring that has taken place through the System of Supports initiative and the reorganization of AVID, STAE and Project Excel.
In the context of the current celebration of ETHS's 125th anniversary, Dr. Witherspoon said, "In our 125-year history one of the things that would have to concern all of us is that if you measure it by standardized tests, students of color have not enjoyed the same success overall that the white kids have enjoyed at this school."
Administrators have taken steps recently to expand mixed-level classes to provide more opportunity for minority students to be exposed to honors-level work. They credit this effort and the more comprehensive support programs with the substantial improvements in standardized test scores for minority students this past year.
Although mixed-level classes, in some form or another, have been around "for decades" at ETHS, Dr. Witherspoon acknowledged that past efforts had been inadequate to meet the goal of improving the performance of lower achievers and at the same time provide sufficient challenge for higher achievers.
"If you measure it by standardized tests, students of color have not enjoyed the same success overall that the white kids have enjoyed at this school." -- District 202 Superintendent Dr. Eric Witherspoon
"In past years straight honors did move at a faster pace," Dr. Witherspoon said in response to questions from the audience about the difference between honors in an honors-only classes and honors in mixed-level classes. "One of the things that we're trying to do now is to have honors be honors - we're trying very hard to have the same curriculum. That was not always the case."
"I'd like to know why you have honors at all, then," asked one parent, who did not identify herself. "Unless you want to have an elitist school, why are you separating out honors?"
"You are asking the pertinent question," replied Dr. Witherspoon. "Because we didn't want to move too rapidly and make sure we got it right. But it does beg that question. That's what we're trying to do this year is to get this thing right, so that we can demonstrate that there is no difference between the straight honors and the mixed honors."
The same parent replied, "I've had children for ten years straight in the high school. The rigor of a mixed-level class doesn't come close to an honors class."
"You haven't gotten it right for that many years," she continued. "It seems half-baked, although I very much appreciate all the support you're doing. The teachers don't seem to be prepared to teach the mixed-level. Why would it be any different?"
Dr. Laura Cooper, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, attempted to provide further insight into changes being made to the mixed-level structures.
"We are redesigning the curriculum for Freshman Humanities so that there is one curriculum straight honors or mixed-level," she said.
Jennifer Fisher, History Department chair, echoed Dr. Cooper's remarks.
"I've been at this high school for 31 years," she said "and for the first time in [all those] years in Freshman Humanities, we are working on common assessments, common assignments and a common semester exam. We are doing really difficult work - I promise you that the history and English teachers are really committed to this."
Dr. Witherspoon conceded that mixed-level classes had not met expectations for rigor in past years, but said he was confident that the new approach would improve both challenge and performance. He also acknowledged that the process of making all senior English classes mixed-level, a cause of frustration and lack of trust for many at the meeting, had not conformed to the procedures he favored for such change and that it would not happen that way again.
Although the forum promised that administrators would present research on mixed-level classes and although the terms "research" and "studies" were used frequently in the defense of the expansion of mixed classes, little concrete information was provided. When such information was provided, its value was questioned.
"We are working with a national expert named Jessica Hockett [University of Virginia]," said Ms. Fisher, "and for the first time, teachers are being trained. We are being trained on something called differentiation of instruction which means we assess where kids are, what they need and how we can move them."
PTSA co-president Deborah Graham challenged the immediate value of the approach.
"In Freshman Humanities, we are working on common assessments, common assignments and a common semester exam. We are doing really difficult work - I promise you that the history and English teachers are really committed to this." -- Jennifer Fisher, History Department chair
"I served on the D65 enrichment committee, which spent months working on the issue of differentiation and how to implement it effectively, because it hasn't been working to date in D65," said Ms. Graham. "Jessica Hockett spoke to us and one of my big concerns that if you start from ground zero and you begin to implement a differentiation model it can take up to five years for results to begin to be felt. So what's going to happen to all of our kids during these next five, and especially when the teachers who are teaching these classes [have received only] two days of training this summer which isn't that much."
"For all the years I've lived in this community, I've had to listen to a community talk about students of color in a deficit model." - District 202 School Board President Martha Burns Other parents expressed similar concerns.
"I haven't heard anything about the honors kids raising their test scores," queried one parent. "How's it going to help our kids?"
Another remarked, "To make the argument that this is going to be of great benefit to the higher-achieving students is not a common-sense argument."
A different point of view was voiced by another parent. "We know there are kids that are not meeting standards and we have to put the resources there. You only have a limited amount of resources and you have to put the resources in the kids that are not meeting the standards."
District 202 Board President Martha Burns challenged the idea that "high achieving white students" had nothing to gain by being in a mixed-level class. "Kids of color bring capital to the classroom. For [all the] years that I've lived in this community, I've had to listen to a community talk about students of color in a deficit model." But then she struck a more positive note. "If we can't do it here [in Evanston], we can't do it anywhere. If the classrooms aren't working, we want to know about it."
A show of hands of the people left at the end of the two-and-a-half hour meeting indicated that many still had not been satisfied by the information presented. Ms. Graham suggested that the topic be continued at the next PTSA meeting, scheduled for Nov. 6.
“Scatter the smart ones that will do ALL the work at a slowed down pace and lift the dumb/stupid ones UP through that. In educrat circles it is known as comparative learning.”
Hey - watch it. They’re just spreading the wealth around. (”Sounds a lot like socialism to me”).
Bringing black scores up is hard.
Crippling white students scores to bring them down is easier.
For years I have been noticing this trend — excuse me, it isn’t scientific and all...but what it is, is just good ol’e fashioned common sense.
Just about 1991 when RAP started becoming very main stream...was about the same time teachers were no longer allowed to discipline the “disruptive” students in the classroom for fear of litigation...so, the student was removed from the classroom - the reality of that situation is, instead of insisting that the student behave, mind the teacher, and pay attention we instead came up with an excuse for the behavior — ADD/ADHD and shuffle the child off to the slow learning class.
The conservative minded tough teachers got tired of fighting the school board about un-ruly students with little to no support and they started leaving, retiring, or moving on to something else where they didn’t have to put up with the BS.
Then, entered the “easier softer liberal” teachers…with the students now with ADD/ADHD and the “let’s love everyone” BS — kids started becoming more and more violent - why, because there are no consequences for anyone anymore…everyone is a victim of something and no one is responsible for their behavior or actions.
Well, they are still behaving badly there — why, because the child isn’t receiving disciple at home, how on earth could you expect the child to conform to societal norms in public when they have never seen it or had it enforced in the home.
All the RAP culture has taught young AA males is, “you are a sucker if you let the man tell you what to do.”
You can still get rich and live the “high life,” even if you don’t have a HS education...then, when reality sets in and they find out that they can’t get a job at McDonalds because they don’t have HS diploma — then they become a “victim of the system.”
The problem with that culture is there is “no accountability,” in the home or at the school.
Stop the bad behavior, re-establish strict guidelines for performance and conduct on school property with swift and meaningful punishment for bad behavior and I can assure you — the bad behavior goes a way.
Leave the kids in the gifted classes alone — they are our only saving grace.
We switched my son to private school for high school because he wasn’t getting pushed hard enough in the public school system.
The public high school only had 1 honors class for freshmen. Every subject has honors classes in the private school. Also, the level of students in the private school is much higher in the private school.
I knew toooooo many gifted kids in college who couldn’t handle studying in college. I would prefer that my gifted kids learn how to work hard while they are younger.
At the same time, I just want my special needs daughter to be at grade level. I also think she will eventually go to college because she is very good at math. I don’t know what her career will be, but it should be math related and not writing.
I’ve thought seriously about homeschooling my special needs daughter because it would be so easy to tailor her education, but she loves going to school. She loves the social aspects. She loves being around the kids. She loves her teachers. She loves playing on the softball team. It just makes our evenings a living H*** trying to get homework done!!!!!!!!!!!
We met with my daughters’ teachers and principal just last week.
They used to separate the kids based on their levels, but now they have put all the kids together. One of their reasons was that the misbehaving kids were all in the lower level class.
It’s hard because my special needs daughter is lower level work wise, but she is very well-behaved. I would hate her to be lumped with a lot of misbahaving kids.
This playing around with mixing achievers and non-achievers makes no sense, no matter what color, either.
I live in a ‘white-collar, mostly white town. Years ago, when my kids were in grade school, someone got the bright idea to align the A students with the C students, and the B students with the D/F students. The idea was to bring up the level of the lower grade students. It wasn’t a popular idea and after a while it was quietly dropped. I guess that if it worked the way it was supposed to it would have stayed.
How about looking for the root cause of the underachievers and do something about that!!
“It just makes our evenings a living H*** trying to get homework done!!!!!!!!!!!”
My one twin daughter - it’s like pulling teeth to keep her on task. Not a huge problem, but more than once have discussed getting her checked out. But I view it as just “typical” kid behaviour. My son was ALWAYS very diligent, rule oriented, etc. The one daughter is perhaps the most “normal” but perhaps a bit TOO normal. And the other daughter drags her feet on EVERYTHING, her mind is ALWAYS thinking about something - just not often enough on the task at hand. (She is also the wittiest and most observant!) They all have their special niche and the trick is to find the way to reach that niche in their own way.
An old boss of mine when asked how many children he had would always answer “Three. One of each.”
We were actually getting the handle on homework with my special needs daughter, and then last October she had a grand mal seizure, and since she has been diagnosed with epilepsy and put on anti-seizure meds.
Now, the medication wears off in the afternoon, and she is really toast when it comes to any language based work after school. Also, stress can bring on a seizure, so we don’t want to stress her out. I don’t know if it’s the seizures or the medication, but her processing speed has gone down a ton since last year. She is a lot slower then she used to be.
After she takes her second dose of medication at 6, and she eats dinner, she can handle some language based homework, but it’s so late by then. She also sleeps more since her seizure. In the summer, she was typically sleeping 10-12 hours every day.
Leftism is about equal outcome, not equal opportunity. The Utopian goal is to eliminate envy in the world. Their dream is completely unattainable though. The first problem is that envy is a choice, not an inevitability. There will always be those that choose it. The second is that there are many sources that prompt envy and they cannot cap them all. They can induce academic equal outcome by tripping up the smart kids but this does nothing to address athletic and artistic ability, talent, looks, personality, temperament, health, family. An envy free world is unquestionably unattainable. Efforts to achieve it are futile and a waste of limited resources. The goal of leftism is unsound from the start and should be recognized as a fast spreading pathogen infecting our culture. Life just isn’t fair and can never be made so.
Hey watch what you say. Some kids are smart, but not in every area.
My special needs daughter can’t handle the language activities, but she is gifted at math.
Some kids are great at reading/writing, but not at math.
My special needs daughter is one of the hardest workers if she is given activities she can do.
By the way, I absolutely hate group projects!!!!!!!!! It’s not like the workforce. In the workforce, there is a boss who is in charge who assigns people to perform work that they hopefully can do. If a person doesn’t do the work, they are fired. Group projects in school do not work like that.
Sorry to hear of the medical problems. From your earlier posts she sounds like she’s got things pretty together (excels in math, grade-appropriate reading and writing, friends, sports, etc.). Obviously she is a tough one to overcome her difficulties like that. (Sounds like mom is a tough one too!)
Group projects are big in parts of the workforce.
Without a boss????? There’s always a boss that assigns the work. There’s always a boss who is responsible for the output.
She is one tough cookie. I just see her starting to give up this year with school. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her do that. There’s days where she just doesn’t want to do homework/study at all. You can tell she’s burning out. It’s got me concerned.
“It’s hard because my special needs daughter is lower level work wise, but she is very well-behaved. I would hate her to be lumped with a lot of misbehaving kids.”
And that is precisely where the inequity begins...the kids that are struggling to learn — but are there to learn it — that is the part of all this that is completely unfair to them to be sequestered off with the kids that don’t care whether or not they graduate because they think they are going to be driving around in a Cadillac Escalade and making six figure salaries a year like the RAP singers...
The disruptive students — the ones that make learning hard for other students should be forced — after so many visits to the principles office to attend some sort of vocational institution and leave the main stream educational system like that have accomplished in LA.
After the 1995 Watts riots, LA spent millions on the South Central Vocational HS system, which essentially replaced the traditional HS system for underachieving minorities in South Central LA — at least they are able to learn a trade and they are not disrupting the classroom.
When they graduate they at least have a trade that they can fall back on when the RAP contract doesn’t come through.
Evanston has wealth on the waterfront and a ghetto to the west (Janeway Avenue?). I haven’t been there in a decade, but assume its schizophrenic nature hasn’t changed. Reminds me alot of Englewood, NJ: wealthy limo libs on one side of the tracks, poor welfare-dependent Dems on the other.
Sounds like my school district. I live in San Jose in California. The district is only 2 miles wide, and over 20 miles long.
The northern half of the district is near downtown, and is primarily hispanic and poor.
The southern half of the district is well to do suburbia that is primrily white and asian.
A group of parents tried to split the district, but that didn’t work.
The needs of the northern half of the district are so different then the needs of the southern half. It’s really not fair to either group.
Do you always go back and forth with the private vs public school issue? Please do not send your daughter back to public school. She and parents like you are the last thing struggling San Jose schools need. I assume you live in the Southern more affluent end of San Jose?
I’ve had kids in both at the same time. I’m interested in both private and public school.
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