Dear Concerned Community members:
I am dismayed that some of you believe your children, or children you know, were poorly educated by San Benito High School. I am dismayed to think that even a small number of people in our community might believe that. I certainly don’t.
I do believe many members of our community are proud of their well-educated children and what they achieved while attending SBHS. My bulletin board is covered several layers thick with letters, cards and emails from former students attending medical, dental, and nursing schools and acknowledging that the rigorous Anatomy course I teach was of great value to them, and thanking me for the role I played in giving them what they believe was a great head start for college. But more importantly, I know that all of my colleagues have similar collections.
But that is not the experience of every student, as Marty Richman pointed out in a recent commentary. Though the statistics he quoted are grim, there are some extenuating circumstances and considerations I would like to explain, as it is not as simple as it initially appears nor as simple as his criticism. We have been a Distinguished School three times in my tenure and in 1999 the entire teaching staff received a $10,000 bonus each for the excellent job our school was doing in producing exemplary test scores. Within two years, we were placed in program improvement. So what happened? We deteriorated so completely in so little time?
To sum it up for you in a nut shell, what happened was this: the educational goals shifted, the curriculum suddenly changed, and the way the testing was evaluated and compared changed. Prior to “No Child Left Behind,” we had placed the emphasis on teaching “thinking” and “problem solving” using strategies like cooperative learning which simulate the experiences of real workers in real life. This curricula was fun, relevant to real life skills, engaging, and more forgiving of students who were English language learners as they were assessed less on memorization of facts or knowledge of specific vocabulary and more on figuring stuff out.
Then we began this exaggerated emphasis on lengthy testing (a whole school week!) using multiple-choice tests based on specific facts that we were then encouraged to drill into our students over and over and over. The facts were arbitrarily selected by some state curriculum committee (for example, the three main digestive enzymes and the organs where they are produced were essential facts that every biology student had to know, and then there were NO questions at all about seven of the 12 systems of the body). Ironically, while the stakes of the test results were huge for the district and the teachers, they were non-existent for the students. I repeat for emphasis: the test results had NO impact on the students. Consequently, many students, completely disillusioned and exhausted by the extensive testing regimen, simply bubbled cute designs, or random answers and put their heads down to finish out the two-hour testing block with a little nap.
Bizarrely, one of the testing “rules” was that everyone had to take a test, whether they were in the class or not! My Anatomy students were given the biology test because there was no Anatomy test and at least they had all had taken biology two years prior. They always did extremely well, and I appeared to be a really great biology teacher without ever teaching a single section of biology. All students were tested in Earth Science in April although Earth Science was a one-semester class at the time and the fall students had finished their course before Christmas with no opportunity to review the detailed minutia likely to be on the test.
I looked at the sample Earth Science test questions that were provided to the teachers one year because I had, many years ago, taught Earth Science and felt that I was fairly proficient in the material. I understand the size and structure of the universe and our solar system, the nature of light, the Doppler Effect, what causes tides, weather, waves, rain on the East coast and none here, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornados, seasons, days, and years. And yet I could not answer 22 of the 25 questions that had been on the FRESHMAN Earth Science test the year before. That drove the decision to make Earth Science a year-long class.
Another fact of the API system is that it sets and then resets the bar for achievement each year. No matter how you do, the bar is always set higher for the next year. In other words, you not only have to keep improving, you have to keep improving how you improve. That probably sounds good, like what you would do if you wanted to run a marathon: 1 mile today, 2 miles tomorrow, until you eventually get to 26 miles. But it is not like that; it is like improving your time for the mile sprint by knocking 4 seconds off your time this year followed by having to knock 4 seconds off your time next year and maybe 6 the year after … except, of course, that the folks held accountable for the times are not the runners, they are the runners’ coaches. And the runners get exactly the same thing whether they meet this demand for improvement or not, and that is nothing. That is how even schools like Palo Alto High School end up in program improvement.
As you may be aware, the curriculum is rapidly and dramatically changing again, as is the testing. We have ushered in “Common Core,” all new curriculum in English, Social Science and Math. Soon, we will begin to see the new science tests based on the new science goals called “Next Generation Science Standards” and that will dictate to a large degree the curriculum for many of our science classes. All the testing will take place on the computer and students will be required to solve problems and explain how they did it. Students who can’t “keyboard” will be at a disadvantage. Other well-documented disadvantages will continue to play a role in lowering test scores, like low socio-economic status, not having been read to as a child, and not being completely proficient in English. And, of course, the biggest one of all: motivation!
I am amazed that as many students take the test as earnestly as they do. The fact that a student doesn’t do well on the standardized math test has nothing to do with anything relevant to the student. They can still take honors courses, they can still go to college and they can still be the business owner and not the guy that sweeps up (although I believe Mr. Richman was attempting to imply that custodial work is demeaning and I couldn’t disagree with you more). Fortunately, there are classes where student interest, and relevance, and other factors besides test scores drive the curriculum and they include a very wide variety of electives.
So, finally, the commentary seems to think that teachers select the curriculum (poorly) then do a poor job of teaching it when, in fact, that is typically not in our control. The curriculum for courses that have standardized tests is driven by the standardized tests we give but have never seen, and of course, were not written by us. And selection of a particular curriculum depends on the hints that have been given as to what might be on the test.
The hardest part of the job is not enduring unfair or inaccurate criticism, it is helping people understand that a couple of test scores do not begin to tell the whole story of what San Benito High School has to offer to our diverse student population.
Students can try out vocational options through our state-recognized Ag program, with both vocational and leadership training, in soon-to-be state of the art Ag facilities. There is cooking for fun or for exploring it as a career option, as is also the case with metals, woods, sewing and auto, again in what will soon be a new, state of the art facility. There are Advanced Placement (AP) classes in every discipline and an industrious student can easily complete a year of college units before they graduate. There are advanced classes and electives in Math, Science (Chemistry, Physics, Anatomy, and Environmental Science), English, and Social Science. There are opportunities to learn to work with disabled students or to learn to be friends with disabled students through our wonderful and heartwarming Circle of Friends. There are opportunities for disabled students to participate as other students do on the Gifted Cheer squad. Special Ed students are being mainstreamed into the Gen Ed population. We have excellent music, drama, and dance teachers and each field includes multiple opportunities for creative expression. We have a phenomenal art program that includes drawing and pottery. And, of course, the most exciting part of high school for many students is the opportunity to participate in sports at this level and we have an outstanding athletic program for our diverse student interests, or to be active in one of our 50 or so clubs that range from STEM Club and robots, to cleaning up the environment, running blood drives, exploring the world through travel, music lessons for rock and rollers, and many others.
So we teachers will, as we have done so many times before, work many long overtime hours to put yet another new curriculum in place. We will work to understand the new testing procedures and how to prepare our students to take it. We will continue to try to motivate our students to get as excited about the standardized tests as some members of the community are. We will continue to be available to students for individual tutoring and to colleagues for peer coaching and curriculum revisions. We will continue to be optimistic about our students and their opportunities and to believe that we can help all of them learn. We will continue to accept the fact that some people just take pleasure in criticizing others, and that the people we should listen to are the ones who want to help and who will inform themselves and offer constructive suggestions.
I would like to extend an invitation to Mr. Richman and any of the other outspoken critical comment writers to be my guests for a tour of our campus and to be introduced to some of the very fine people who continue to work hard despite the yoke of unfair criticism. You will see what really goes on at SBHS. Let me know if you can take time out from your schedule of writing colorful commentary and I will give you a tour you will never forget and that will change your mind completely. Are you brave enough to take my offer or are you afraid to find out how hopelessly wrong most of your comments, ideas and basic understandings are?
With all due respect, Katherine Foster.