Curriculum Change Proposed : Back to the Classics Is Plan for Lincoln High

Plans are under way by the San Diego Unified School District to turn Lincoln Senior High School into a bold magnet school with a “classical tradition” of courses that would set higher goals for student achievement and integrate the campus.

According to a 10-page memorandum obtained by The Times, the San Diego school board has proposed revamping the curriculum at the troubled campus because of consistently low test scores and out of a determination to improve the academic environment at the predominantly black school.

“School personnel and various community persons agree that the low test scores and matters of safety and security dictate a need for drastic educational change at Lincoln High School,” said the proposal.

According to the memorandum, “test results over the past 10 years show very slow progress in student achievement.” While language and math scores have improved slightly, school officials found there has been no “significant progress” in reading scores.

Lincoln currently has a magnet program that offers medicine and health classes, but school officials say it has failed to attract talented students. Officials blame the program’s failure on the “perceived safety and security concerns” which act as barriers “to enrollment of nonresident majority students.”

If the board approves the proposal, the revised campus would be called the Lincoln Academy of Language and Classical Studies and would offer students a “renaissance-type of education.”

The plan envisions a rigorous, classical curriculum that emphasizes language, mathematics and science. Students would be required to take traditional courses, including one semester of Latin. They also would have to complete three years of a foreign language, choosing from French, German, Latin, Russian and Spanish.

Students also would be required to take a one-semester course on Western civilization that emphasizes philosophy, ethics and aesthetics. The program would require an extended school day that would run from 7:30 a.m. to 2:10 p.m. for some students and from 8:20 a.m. to 3:10 p.m. for others.

But, for the magnet program to succeed, Assistant Supt. George Frey said the plan must attract a higher number of white students. Frey, who supervises the district’s Community Relations and Integration Services Division, said that currently only 6.5% of Lincoln’s students are white. Most of them are part-time students who are there only two hours a day to take the magnet courses in medicine and health.

“The medicine and health magnet failed in terms of pulling in full-time white students,” Frey said.

The district’s proposal notes that the small number of white students at Lincoln does “not contribute to meeting integration goals.” School officials hope that the revised curriculum will benefit black students and attract a larger number of white students from other areas.

Frey said that district officials presented the plan to the school board, which in turn asked them to get more input from community groups and parents living around the campus, at 49th Street and Imperial Avenue. While community reaction to the program has been encouraging, Frey said that some teachers at Lincoln have expressed concern about their positions.

He said that district officials are not sure what they will do with teachers who are not qualified to teach the new curriculum.

According to the district’s plan, Lincoln’s medicine and health magnet would be incorporated into the science program at Samuel Gompers Secondary School, which already is a magnet. The 7th- and 8th-grade students at Gompers would be transferred to Lincoln.

A school official told The Times the district has received $3.1 million in federal money to fund the Lincoln proposal.