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Apple Valley teachers seek student accountabilityStories by Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
Photos by Scott Buschman
Apple Valley was once a sparsely populated ranching community that housed the museum of world-famous cowboy Roy Rogers and his wife, Dale Evans. Tourists came from far and near to see Trigger, the stuffed horse.
Today, Apple Valley is a burgeoning bedroom community with a diverse student population and 17 schools. While members of the Apple Valley Unified Teachers Association (AVUTA) haven't exactly declared "high noon" against the district's handling of social promotion, they have let it be known that it's high time to rethink the current policy of promoting failing students from grade to grade.
"Students who fail their classes in middle school are passed on to the next grade level," states a letter to the superintendent and school board from the association's representative council. "After three years of showing little effort in middle school, they continue to fail in high school. Usually, about the middle of their freshman year, many of these students realize they will not graduate if they do not pass their classes. It seems that this lesson should be taught much sooner to be more effective."
AVUTA members have asked to work with the district to "create solutions" that will no longer allow students to pass from one year to the next without showing achievement. Administrators have agreed to the creation of a joint task force to study the problem and have scheduled the first meeting.
"I want to see some attention focused on this," says Stefanie VanderLaag, who teaches freshman English at Apple Valley High School. "Right now, we are in a 'lose-lose situation' because we're promoting students who are not ready to succeed at a higher level and the school is held accountable on the API [Academic Performance Index]."
"Social promotion is basically happening at the middle school," says Pam Gallardo, a Spanish teacher at Apple Valley High. "No students were held back at the middle school. In the past, students had mandatory summer school where they would have to work on study skills, but they haven't had that in a couple of years." The reason is it couldn't be enforced.
Even though summer school is no longer mandatory, Trenae Nelson, the district's director of curriculum and instruction, says parents are told it is an "excellent opportunity" for their children to receive intervention. Since statistics on the number of students retained last year compared with previous years are not readily available, she could not say whether it has gone up or down. She did say, however, that most retention occurs in the early grades and that the criteria for retention have "multiple measures," including test scores, report cards and the district's own academic tests.
In accordance with the law, there are multiple intervention classes and programs for students at risk of failing. And the district has a high passage rate for the High School Exit Exam.
"Still, there's a problem here," says Gallardo. "Kids are less prepared than they used to be and less motivated. And teachers are very frustrated."
"It seems to be more accepted now for kids not to do the work," says Wes Bahney, a reading teacher at the high school. "And the kids know there will not be any consequences for their action."
What typically happens, says Bahney, is that seniors are told they won't be graduating - even if they have passed the California High School Exit Exam - if they lack credits. "Parents call me up and try to see if I can change the grade. If that doesn't work, they'll call the administrators to see if they can get me to change the grade. I always tell the parents, 'I called you several times during the year on this matter. Why didn't you concern yourself with it then?' They never have an answer, other than they are upset that I won't change the grade."
Some of his ninth-grade reading students agree that teens would work harder if there were consequences for sloughing off.
"Lots of teachers say that if you don't do the work, you'll be held back, but you won't," says Francisco Lechuga. He says he keeps his grades up for sports, but other students don't have that incentive.
"It would be helpful for students if there were consequences, because otherwise it just gets harder in every grade to catch up," says student Anthony Vargas. "It's not going to go away."
At one time, students were held accountable for not doing the work, recalls Amy Bateman, an English teacher at Apple Valley High. In fact, her sister failed eighth-grade physical education and had to repeat an entire semester before she was allowed to come to high school. While Bateman thinks that may have been a bit harsh, "I think the district needs to be honest with students and hold them accountable. You can't just tell kids that if they don't pass, they won't go to high school - and then they don't pass and do go on to high school."
There is practically no retention of middle school students unless it's at the request of parents, confirms Diane Kennedy, a science and reading improvement teacher at Vista Campana Middle School.
"I haven't seen an eighth-grader held back in seven years," she says. "We can't even threaten them because they know it's not true."
"Something major needs to happen with accountability," she says. "Students are being taught through experience that it's okay to fail. We need to change that. If we don't, we'll be left behind in the global economy."
Rather than retaining middle school students en masse, Kennedy would prefer to see the middle school, like the high school, have credits in place, so that students would have something concrete to strive for in order to be promoted to high school.
"At least you would have to pass your core classes to go on," she says. Maybe then students would figure out that if they're in eighth grade and need five more credits, they'd better get themselves in gear.
Other suggestions made by AVUTA members include instituting:
Smaller class sizes could help students succeed, suggests Rick Raponi, an algebra and pre-algebra teacher at Vista Campana Middle School. At the beginning of the year, he had 40 students in most classes - 42 in one - but now his classes average 35 to 36 students.
"It's hard to work one-to-one with students with big classes," he says. "With 20-something kids in a class, you might have one or two behavior problems. With 40 kids, you might have five or six students with behavior problems, and that becomes a big problem."
Nearly 30 percent of Raponi's students presently are earning F's. As students make a last-ditch effort to raise their grades at the end of the year, he expects the number to drop to 15 or 20 percent. But for some students, it won't be enough.
"I have eighth-graders who can barely add and subtract. I'm trying to teach them higher-level math and they don't have the basic foundation for addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. And fractions - oh my God." Part of the reason, he thinks, is that math has been pushed down to younger and younger students, and not all middle school students are developmentally ready for algebra.
Teaching middle school students who've been held back is not easy. He recalls one angry 16-year-old who "did a lot of passive-aggressive stuff."
"He said he wasn't going to do any work because, no matter what, he would be 'outta here' next year. And we can't keep 16-year-olds in eighth grade because they have a completely different physical structure than kids who are 12 and 13."
AVUTA members are pleased to see the district taking their concerns about social promotion seriously and look forward to exploring solutions.
"We have a good working relationship with our administration," says AVUTA President Ned Curtis. "We feel lucky to work in a district with a school board and an administration that listen. Hopefully, we can address this problem together."
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