”
Abysmal’
”
one recent headline blared over a story about public schools in
one of California largest newspapers.
”
School programs not boosting skills’
”
claimed another headline in a different metropolitan paper.
“Abysmal'” one recent headline blared over a story about public schools in one of California largest newspapers.
“School programs not boosting skills'” claimed another headline in a different metropolitan paper.
It’s all part of a picture presented regularly to the state’s voters and parents, seemingly designed to make them regard public schools as abject failures, give up on them and at the very least convince voters to accept semi-independent charter schools funded with tax dollars.
But there is new evidence suggesting it ain’t necessarily so – the public schools in this state may be doing far better than their negative image suggests and there may be no pressing need to change teachers over to a pay structure based entirely on merit, as proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The best news comes from results of advanced placement exams taken by college-bound students at or near the end of their high school years.
The first-ever report on the College Board’s advanced placement testing program shows California ranking fifth on the academically rigorous tests in subjects from calculus and biology to physics and art history.
“It is encouraging news that is consistent with other reports'” responded state Schools Supt. Jack O’Connell. “We have more students in rigorous courses. The schools are making progress.”
In fact, when evaluating public schools, it is usual to focus on the lowest common denominator among students, the academic performance tests they take near the end of each school year.
There has been some progress for California in this realm, too, but the state ranks nowhere near fifth in the nation in performance of all its students.
This stands to reason: No other state has so large a percentage of recent immigrant children in its school populace. No other state enrolls nearly so many English-learners.
So when you test all schoolchildren at the end of first, second or even eighth grade, language deficiencies will push down the overall scores. But by the end of high school, much of the language problem has disappeared, especially for children who have been enrolled in California schools for 10 years or more.
State results released this spring show the schools are doing better and better in this department, too. For three straight years, there’s been an increase in the number of students who formerly had limited English skills but now test as fluent. Fully 47 percent of all kids once classed as limited English now test fluent.
Increasingly, those kids are joining their non-immigrant classmates in taking advanced placement courses and the exams that follow. The 1990s movie “Stand and Deliver” showed how one inspirational teacher at Garfield High School on the east side of Los Angeles could get even new immigrant students to pass advanced placement exams and go on to college. The new numbers suggest that success has spread widely.
For in 2004, fully 44,582 Latino students in California public schools took the exams, a 12 percent increase from the year before and a 30 percent increase from 2002. Over the same time span, Latinos had an increase of 11.1 percent in the number earning a passing grade of 3 or higher on the exams.
One thing for sure: Any student who can pass an advanced placement exam in almost any subject will emerge as a competent adult. For certain, their use of the English language will be at least average and maybe better. Such a student will have to know how to concentrate attention on a task and will have developed some sense of the value of delayed gratification – both vital qualities for long-term success in the American workplace.
They may have learned some of that at home, but odds are most of them learned a lot of it from dedicated teachers – none of whom get merit pay.
Altogether, about the same proportion of high school students take advanced placement exams in California as elsewhere, but minorities made up 58 percent of California’s advanced placement test takers last year. That begins to approach their overall 62 percent in the statewide student body.
The fact they can rank fifth in the nation behind only states like Virginia and Maryland, with far lower immigrant and minority enrollments, firmly indicates that even if some students lag along the way because of the burden of needing to learn English before they can master other subjects, something good is happening in the public schools.
Which means it’s time to stop generalizing about “abysmal” and “failing” schools and focus a bit on the ones that are producing many thousands of very bright and accomplished young adult citizens.
(More information on advanced placement testing can be found at http://apcentral.collegeboard.com)
