Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for June 24, 2005 DYSFUNCTIONAL SCHOOL

All is not sunny in Southern California!

A LOT of the "rhetoric" in this story reminds one of the "bad old days" in CSD #1. May they never return...

San Ysidro march to mark graduation

By Chris Moran
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

SAN YSIDRO – Today, San Ysidro Middle School will recognize 516 eighth-graders in a ceremony to promote them to high school, regardless of whether they passed middle school.

More than a fourth of them did not.

In today's ceremony, 143 students who either flunked classes, didn't earn at least a 2.0 grade-point average, or missed too many days of school will march alongside those who did everything required of them.

Several teachers at the school have protested in staff meetings that students who don't make the grade shouldn't walk in the ceremony. To them, it's a matter of holding students accountable.

"If you don't earn it, you stay home," San Ysidro Middle counselor Rosemarie Ponce said.

Ponce said she's heard administrators say that all students should be able to walk in today's ceremony because it might be the only graduation ceremony they'll ever have. Such low expectations won't help them earn a diploma four years from now, she said.

"We'll never know what they can do unless we raise the bar," Ponce said.

San Ysidro School District board member Paul Randolph agreed.

"If you put kids through a ceremony that recognizes and rewards them for attendance, for school performance that is really subpar, what message is that sending them?" he asked.

Principal Carolina Flores agreed that San Ysidro educators need to expect more of their students. The problem is that low expectations are being communicated daily in classrooms, not by universal inclusion in a promotion ceremony, she said.

"I see people not really believing in them (students)," Flores said.

Part of Flores' rationale in allowing all comers into the ceremony is that they're all being promoted and leaving the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade San Ysidro School District. No teacher at San Ysidro Middle has filed paperwork to hold back a single student.

That isn't unusual. Even in a district as large as San Diego, which in the late 1990s called for an end to social promotion – passing students to the next grade regardless of performance – retentions are relatively rare. In 2003, city schools held back 40 of their 10,253 eighth-graders, although more students were retained in other grades.

Flores said her decision to include everyone is not about excusing students who fail school. It may be, Flores said, that school is failing them.

Once San Ysidro Middle students fall behind, their main chances to catch up are two eight-day intersessions during the school year, when other students are on vacation. That's not enough time, Flores said.

It's also sometimes the wrong kind of help. A student who's failing math, for example, might get a social studies teacher for two weeks if that's the only teacher who signs on to work intersession.

"We have kids that do not meet these requirements who for no fault of their own have not received intervention," Flores said. "Somebody's dropped the ball along the way."

Whether they walk in today's ceremony or not, all 516 students are going to high school next year.

And the problem is much worse than the promotion statistics indicate.

How many students met promotion criteria and how many walk in the ceremony are irrelevant statistics to Hector Espinoza, principal of San Ysidro High, where today's ceremony will take place. They'll all be his students next year.

He just wants to know whether they're ready for ninth grade. He sent a team of teachers out to test middle school students, and they reported back to him that 70 percent of the incoming freshman class at San Ysidro High is not at grade level.

For this year's entering ninth-graders, San Ysidro High will have a small school within a school for struggling freshmen. The students will get extra math and English instruction and won't take an elective class. A team of teachers will concentrate on these ninth-graders to establish solid student-teacher connections.

Oceanside Unified School District has taken a similar approach. All eighth-graders walk in promotion ceremonies, but the ones who haven't passed eighth grade are sent to Clair Burgener Academy, a ninth-grade catch-up campus, instead of one of the two high schools.

In the Sweetwater Union High School District, only students who meet all the academic requirements are permitted in the promotion ceremony, although students move on to high school whether they do their schoolwork or not.

Each middle school principal in San Diego city schools decides who gets to walk across the stage. Some allow only those who meet promotion requirements to participate; others allow all eighth-graders to walk.

The consensus among local educators is that, ceremony or not, most eighth-graders should be promoted. Holding back failing students to repeat eighth grade, they say, can do more damage than good, although retention in earlier grades can be beneficial. Studies show that holding students back a grade increases the chances they will drop out of school.

Ultimately, Flores said, better teaching at San Ysidro Middle is the way to end social promotion and eliminate dilemmas about who should participate in ceremonies.

"There's a lot not happening in the classroom," the principal said.

She said she has faced resistance to her policy of demanding that teachers regularly submit lesson plans to her, for instance. Flores is the fourth principal at San Ysidro Middle in five years, and she suspects the holdouts are waiting for her to move on.

Flores said an eighth-grader recently asked her if she was going to beat the curse of the one-year principal.

"It's been a revolving door and these people have been left on their own for so many years that there's no real accountability here," Flores said.

The principal said she plans to do a few things next year to make for a more just promotion policy. First, Flores wants to make sure all teachers grade the same way so every student has an equal chance to pass. She mentioned Sweetwater's end-of-course exams as a possible model for determining students' readiness for high school. She also wants to make sure students have more opportunities to catch up when they fall behind.

For today, there will be two realities at play.

The students who completed the course work will wear medallions on lanyards, have their names printed in bold type in the program and receive certificates of promotion. The names of the others will be listed in a lighter font, and those students will receive a certificate of attendance.