Plan to Give All Pupils a Challenging Schedule Is Good, but Confusing

Mann Middle School teacher Gail Boyle decided last fall that the students in her regular English class were going to learn from the same materials--to read the same novels, think about the same questions--as pupils in her advanced, gifted class.

Her decision meant a lot of extra work because the curriculum in slower classes is usually set up with mainly recall work and multiple-choice work sheets. Boyle also encountered resistance at first from the students--many from ethnic minorities--not used to being challenged to design projects or to think on their own in such courses.

But Boyle, a 21-year veteran of the San Diego city school system, says that the benefits justified pushing the students--and herself--beyond the minimums. The results among at least three-fourths of her class were satisfactory, and in some cases outstanding, she said.

They show that such students can and will benefit from exposure to more rigorous study, Boyle said, given sufficient resources such as after-school tutoring or special teaching materials to help them through the inevitable rough spots.

For Boyle, the experience shows the possibilities of carrying out a still-controversial, not fully understood, school district policy officially known as “equity in student placement.” The complex policy, now 2 years old, still means different things to different administrators and teachers.

Last week, the school board received three reports from its planning department that showed a lack of consistent application of the policy across the district. The division of community relations and integration services later this month will begin showing a videotape that highlights efforts such as Boyle’s and is intended to clear up basic questions about the policy. The board will receive additional reports Tuesday.

Same Opportunities for All

The official policy defines equity in schools as giving all students stimulating course work and the same opportunities to tackle any course for which they appear qualified. It requires the district to work toward giving all students a common base of knowledge, to have them work at or above their grade level and to help teachers design programs that make students want to learn at their best despite the different cultural backgrounds they bring to the public schools.

In its broadest sense, the policy involves major curriculum reform--given sufficient funding--over a period of years to benefit all of the district’s 116,000 students. It is based on research from UCLA and other educational institutions that shows that all children can learn, albeit in different ways, given innovative instruction and exposure to exciting material.

But a critical element of the policy involves the issues of race and achievement that have been talked about for years: Why do economically poor students--and blacks and Latino students in particular--appear in small numbers in advanced or gifted classes? And it comes at a time when the district’s student population has become 46% white and 54% non-white, raising questions about how to address educational needs of students from a non-majority background.

Part of the problem in carrying out the policy stems from difficulty in interpreting the ethnic component. Initially, many teachers criticized what they saw as a requirement for quotas in classrooms, or for single classes in a given subject for all students. In the new videotape, district officials stress that the policy is not about ethnic numbers in a given class but rather about changing attitudes toward students’ learning ability that will ultimately result in improved racial balances.

“Some teachers, some parents, some board members thought it would lead to quotas and that by placing non-white faces in a particular classroom lead to a decline in quality,” said Byron King, a math teacher at the large and multicultural Bell Junior High, where several programs are under way to spur students to more demanding studies. King hastened to add that there is no evidence to show any such decline in quality.

“It’s hard to deal with such a strongly held belief among many people, even today, even though that is not where the equity policy is coming from.”

Added George Frey, the assistant schools superintendent who heads the integration division: “A lot of people simply don’t believe in the abilities of minority students.”

King said the policy says nothing about putting children in courses they cannot handle.

“Rather, it suggest more flexible placement practices, saying don’t put someone in a course who is not qualified but do look at alternate ways of seeing who may be qualified,” he said.

The policy confronts the issue of tracking, where students are placed in a remedial, regular or advanced course based on how a counselor or teacher judges their ability to handle the subject matter.

Math courses in particular have lent themselves to tracking because progression from one step to the next depends on mastering a clearly defined body of knowledge. But district studies show that a student placed in a regular math course in seventh grade, when entering junior high, almost never gets out of that track into more challenging college-preparatory math.

Placement Not Based on Tests

“One of the things we don’t do at Bell is place students simply on the basis of (standardized) test scores,” King said, in part because minority students historically do less well on them than white students for reasons not totally understood.

“If you use them as your only placement criteria, you keep (minorities) out of advanced courses even though their performance in a class may be satisfactory. We don’t want placement done solely by a counselor looking at a lot of test scores student by student.”

Math teachers at Bell review placements continuously, especially early in the school year, looking at a student’s motivation and study skills, King said. Many students are encouraged to move up to a more challenging math course and are offered after-school tutoring to help ease the transition. If not successful, the student can return to a lower course without penalty.

Over a period of several years, the school now has enrolled 94% of its ninth-graders in math classes higher than the basic general math course, and 75% score above grade level averages for state test scores in math.

“The point I want to make is that teachers in the city schools are dedicated and most go out of their way to be fair to all students,” King said. “But that is not enough to change the system.

“There are no vicious teachers out to get non-white students, but it is still very important to go out of your way to understand that some of the rules of the game--even when applied fairly--still discriminate against non-white students.

“The use of only (standardized) test criteria is going to discriminate against non-white students even though it has nothing to do with the students’ ability to succeed in courses,” King said.

By the same token, he added, teachers have to know when they are turning off to a student’s potential because of the child’s cultural mannerisms--a way of conversing or walking.

But King said that neither he nor other teachers are going to give students a good grade for simply trying. Frey said that teachers who reward effort alone often are simply substituting their own kindness for teaching skills, resulting in condescension toward students.

King said, “However, I am going to go out of my way to give the students an opportunity to master the material and will spend time with them after school for tutoring, if that will help.

“Sure we have failures. We are going to place kids wrong, and some will not have their self-esteem improved, but the question should be: Have we improved the instruction for a larger number of students?”

Justification Is Key

C. Kermeen Fristrom, director of basic education for the city schools, said a key point for him under the equity policy is to find justification for opening up courses to students, rather than finding justification for keeping them out.

Even when he was teaching English 20 years at an almost all-white high school, there always were students between those who clearly had qualifications for the top courses and those who did not, Fristrom said.

“And depending on the (particular school), teachers would use the same set of qualifications to say, ‘Keep those (middle) students out so the course will have nothing but the very best,’ while others said, ‘These students are going to be able to do the job.’

“That latter spirit should be the spirit by which admissions to all courses should be decided.”

Of course, many students will remain in regular tracks for a variety of reasons. For that reason, board member Dorothy Smith wants the material in regular-level courses strengthened substantially so that the students will come away with the ability to read and write critically--as well as an excitement about certain subjects--even if they do not go to college.

Smith hopes to stimulate her colleagues to direct new curriculum changes.

“I think maybe we have to reclaim some of the things now in advanced courses and put them into regular courses,” Smith said, adding that a lot of people today believe the regular courses mean little or nothing. “Other than advanced courses, there are no decent alternatives today to preparing students for their futures.”

Smith would place greater numbers of students into advanced classes in the short term to challenge them more. “They’re not successful in the lower-level courses, where a lot have been placed on the assumption that that is where they could be successful.

“I believe that more students should be allowed in the advanced courses because that is where the knowledge is.”

As to qualifications, Smith said that until pressure was put on the gifted and talented program, few teachers were recommending minority students for gifted testing. In the past three years, however, the percentage of minority students in the program has risen to 33% from 20% without any loss of quality, she said.

Based on her experiences both at Mann and from teaching elementary school, Boyle said the curriculum content can be boosted for slower-learning children.

Boyle said that when she taught elementary school, she always placed students into one of three reading groups--”such as ‘bluebirds’ or ‘redbirds’ “--according to reading levels.

Moves Up Were Few

“While the idea is that kids may move from one group to the next, in my own experience it didn’t happen very often. And after six years, the kid in the lower track has never gotten to (real) literature but stays with skills-oriented stories, filling in work sheets and doing vocabulary rather than learning about themes, ethics and all the ideas that novels cause you to consider.

“No one ever challenged me to consider an alternative--that the tracking may not be a good thing for the kids at the lower end because they know within six months that they have been placed at the bottom and then they tend to behave in a manner that reinforces the feeling they see others having toward them.”

Boyle suggested that children could be grouped by reading subject, such as having all those interested in science fiction read such books. The difficulty of the books would still differ from student to student, depending on ability, but all students could discuss how science fiction is written.

Special Tutoring Urged

If some students needed additional reading and vocabulary skills work, special tutoring could be done using literature or novels, not with dull basic readers, she said, pointing to an experimental high school program at Crawford where students work on basic skills while using Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

But Boyle and others say individual teachers cannot be expected to tackle the equity problem in a large-scale fashion without receiving substantial training and other aid on a districtwide level.

“There must be a systematic support system funded and staffed for students and for teachers,” she said.

Fristrom agrees, saying the district must expand seminars, training sessions and other activities for teachers, along with better texts, to make equity policy more than a series of experimental activities.

But that takes money, and Fristrom said the district does not even have enough money to put into effect in all schools a new set of math texts that promotes more student interaction in the classroom.

“You also shouldn’t track teachers,” Boyle said, adding that a mix of classes lets a teacher raise the possibilities at all levels.

“Not all teachers will be superstars,” she said. “But we could all do better with more help and more understanding about the variety of experiences of our children, where their strengths lie, and how we can support them.”