At the prompting of Mr. Howard Blume of the LA Times, I wrote an OP-ED piece and submitted it to the LA Times Opinion Editors. It was rejected - big surprise. Here was what I submitted to the Times back in the early months of 2011:
It’s true. A huge sigh of relief could be felt throughout the campus when word reached our ears that Huntington Park High School had reached an API score of 603. Who wouldn’t be relieved to know that outside groups, including private charter companies, were no longer threatening to take over the school, and that reform would come from us, the stakeholders of our own campus? The relief was short lived when we discovered last week that we would be placed in a special Public School Choice plan (2.5) created by our school board just for us. The original agreement was that any school under School Choice 2.0 would be removed from the list if its API reached 600. Two reasons were offered to justify the district’s reneging on this agreement. Both of these reasons are baseless.
First of all, HPHS as a whole was unjustly compared with Libra Academy, an emerging pilot school on our campus created through the efforts two key teachers and Ms. Yolie Flores, our school board representative. Ms. Flores and Mr. Cortines have claimed that Libra has made great academic strides in comparison with the remainder of the campus; so that Libra stands as some kind of model for the rest of us. Libra is still a part of HPHS, but they have still pointed to an API of 726 given by someone other than the state of California to Libra with its 124 freshmen last year. They have also claimed that removing these 124 freshmen from the figure would drop HPHS to an API score of 546. This is a drop of 57 points attributed to the removal of 124 freshmen from the calculation of an API for a school of 4,000? You don’t have to be an Einstein to furrow your eyebrows at the math here.
Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that the 726 API number is correct for Libra Academy. It becomes irrelevant when a closer examination is made of the two student bodies. The 124 Libra freshmen from last year began the year with recorded eighth grade CST scores well ahead of the remainder of the campus. Libra accomplished this by selecting its students using an application process that required a portfolio. What kind of prospective ninth grade student is going to produce a portfolio to get into a smaller school? Will his or her parents be uninformed or uninvolved in their child’s education? Parent involvement is a huge factor in a child’s academic success. We don’t have anywhere near the degree of parent involvement we would like to see at HPHS. Libra obviously received kids with that important factor firmly in place.
The CST scores confirm what I’m saying. Percentages display a good contrast. 33 percent of Libra’s freshmen last year carried with them English CST eighth grade scores at proficient or advanced. 15 percent of the 916 freshmen in the remainder of HPHS scored as high during eighth grade. 28 percent of Libra’s freshmen scored this way in math during their eighth grade year. 13 percent of the rest of HPHS scored as high in math.
In the spring of 2010, 112 students took the CST’s at Libra. Libra showed gains in English. 65 students tested as “Advanced” or “proficient.”(58%) Their math scores, however, dropped significantly to show only 14 students testing into these categories (13%)while the number scoring at “below basic” and “far below basic” rose from 33 to 55 (49%). Science scores also dropped. Only 30 students demonstrated “advanced” or “proficient” skill levels in the spring (27%) compared with eighth grades scores of 45% at advanced or proficient levels in science. HPHS took on a similar pattern of CST results in the spring with percentages in the advanced and proficient categories checking in at 25%, 6%, and 11% in the same subject areas respectively. According to the tests, both schools gained ground in English and lost ground in math and science.
If Libra itself were to receive a “value added” score, it would be low. Someone might argue that the students don’t take the CST’s seriously and don’t put much effort into them. I would respond with, “YES INDEED!” Would someone please inform the staff of the LA Times before they start printing high school teachers’ “value added” scores! At HPHS our passing rates on the CAHSEE have never correlated with scores on CST’s. The students take the CAHSEE much more seriously than they take CST’s. Why shouldn’t they? The CAHSEE counts toward graduation. The CST’s do not. Our kids are NOT stupid.
At the present time over 220 students are enrolled in Libra Academy. They moved into more bungalows driving those of us from the regular campus who were using these bungalows prior to September to be shoved into the cafeteria or the auditorium during the last two weeks of an eight week block of instruction while the bungalows were repaired and beautified as preparation for Libra. Currently Libra has a population of special education students amounting to 2% of its enrollment. The regular school has 11% special ed. Libra’s population of limited English proficient students amounts to 17% of its enrollment. On the regular campus, 31% of our students are classified as limited English proficient.
Libra Academy does not teach students who function at similar academic levels as the remainder of the school. Comparisons between the two schools are at best irrelevant and at worse deceptive.
The second charge leveled against Huntington Park High School is that the school has dropped a sense of urgency in its plans for reform after the announcement of API scores. This is simply not true.
As an English teacher there for eleven years and a second year member of its School Site Council, I can attest that urgency has never left the minds of the faculty at HPHS. Desperation disappeared, but a sense of urgency remained.
Under the leadership of our new principal Mr. Al Castillo, the council has endorsed a plan to incorporate more technology in its instruction using project-based learning plans and internet tools. Two representatives from the school were able to persuade the city council to set up a tower near the campus in order to create WiFi services for the school and the surrounding community. Training and preparation were in planning stages in order to begin implementation of project-based instruction. Academic intervention would also be available by way of internet services.
Most importantly, a committee of about a dozen teachers has been furiously at work for more than six months creating a design for a freshman house, a small academy or learning community for the purpose of focusing on freshmen and their unique sets of needs as they transition from middle school into high school. The Freshman house would offer quick and aggressive intervention to alter inappropriate behavior. It would offer remediation and training in any inadequate school habits that might stand in the way of success. Also, every freshman student would be issued a lap top computer which he or she could take home with them. Parents would also receive internet training so that they could keep track of school assignments and their child’s progress in class. A partnership would be developed with a high tech company yet to be picked and announced.
As a seasoned English teacher at HPHS, I consider all of these plans to hold at least a hope for genuine improvement in our school’s academic performance. They hold hope because they address real problems not solutions that upper level administrators have decided upon without any real investigation of what is going on. Intervention, remediation, motivation, engagement – these are the things that are lacking in high schools, including ours. Technology and a concentration on freshmen can offer what is lacking. It’s no guarantee, but these ideas stand a much better chance of success than out of touch programs intended to fix the teacher.
I was almost looking forward to the possibility of no longer having to hear surly adolescents tell me that it didn’t matter if they passed my class or not because they could make up the credits in intersession or in “beyond the bell” – diluted, easier versions of regular classes which are provided by the district as escape valves. I was almost looking forward to NOT having students walk into my class expecting to turn their desks so that they face each other in order to gossip, joke, and mindlessly copy an assignment from one student who did it in their group.
With effective intervention, students who don’t understand fractions might not be placed in Algebra where they will fail and the district will blame the teacher. Students who don’t understand algebra will not be placed in Chemistry where they will fail and the district will blame the teacher. There was hope, and then the district dropped the bomb.
The sudden imposition of Public School Choice 2.5 jeopardizes all of these plans for the future. It has sparked a deeper sense of distrust and despair throughout the campus. Dividing the campus into four to six separate pilot schools will create a greater scarcity of resources and result in wasteful spending on administration and the duplication of services. The massive sense of resentment begotten by the hostile and uninformed interference of Ms. Flores will surely preclude any possibility of success for this division. It would accomplish nothing but the maintenance of blind educational ideology.
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