Steve Scanlan and I fought this idea vigorously when our principal first introduced it. The original vote was 60 percent opposed over 40 percent in favor, but early in the year of 2010, our principal threw it at the faculty once again, but this time the faculty was frightened by the Board's Public School Choice mandate that accused teachers of being the problem at a low performing school such as ours. We were under constraints to come up with reform ourselves or have our board member, Ms. Yolie Flores, invoke No Child Left Behind and blow up the school with reconstitution. I criticized block scheduling, but my memo as you see it here was confiscated; even so, it leaked out to the faculty.
Why don’t we try pink tutus and groucho Marx glasses? Yes, we’ll make the teachers wear these things each day for the good of our kids. Well, hey, we haven’t tried this yet. Aren’t you in favor of bold risk taking? We shouldn’t be afraid of change. And so the line of illogic goes.
Yes, back by no one’s demand, is the four by four block schedule. Let me qualify that last statement. It’s back in discussion by no teacher demand, but then again, the opinions of experienced teachers have never mattered much in school decision making here at HPHS have they? The opinions of experienced teachers are obstacles to be diverted and pushed aside.
Is the four by four block schedule something that has proven itself to be successful in other places? Hardly. There are some prestigious prep schools which have adopted it and seem to like it, but let’s not forget that these schools also have a student population with retention skills, academic habits and motivation far surpassing our own. Don’t throw that regurgitated 60s civil rights banter at me. If our district administration didn’t see this as well, then they wouldn’t mandate the intervention time that this proposal has embedded in the plan. Of course, our kids can do the work. They just don’t want to do it. That’s the problem. The four by four block schedule capitulates to rather than solves the real problem.
So if the four by four has no proven track record, why is it rearing its ugly head again? That’s simple. The big boys of District Six want it. Why do they want it? There’s a chance that it could increase the graduation rate. It gives students the opportunity to fail several times and retake the simplified version of a class. It does this by truncating the high school experience and quickening the pace, inevitably, dumbing-down the course work. The resulting diploma mill will eventually impair the future of the kids, but it looks good on paper. When test scores later reflect reality, who will be blamed? Well, you know that the answer to that question.
What has become of our teacher initiated ninth grade house? – yes, pushed aside. It was voted on by School Site Council and approved BEFORE the new school – you know which one I’m talking about - the one that is vaguely patterned after Libra and threatens to displace A track teachers and throw everyone into a tizzy over room assignments. This new school was approved by an 8 to 6 vote on SSC after making sure that ALL parents and students were present and had been properly prepped prior to voting. None of the faculty members voted in favor of this idea.
Finally there are the scare tactics to deal with. We MUST have the four by four schedule or we’ll end up like Fremont? Oh please – we’re in trouble because of our API score. The graduation rate contributes as only a fraction of our API score. Within the past few years many of us have noticed a deterioration in the behavior of our students. There have been several serious violent incidents. We have few cameras in operation to catch these incidents. When you have a campus with more students running amuck is the general student population more likely to take a standardized test seriously? Are we more likely to see thought being given to the answers as they bubble those scan sheets? Time will tell.
- Philip R. Keller
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