Is KHSD's anti-promotion policy helping students?
| Monday, Sep 07 2009 12:15 AM
Last Updated Monday, Sep 07 2009 12:15 AM
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Shafter High School students make their way to their first class after attending a back-to-school assembly in 2002.
Three years of an anti-promotion policy in the Kern High School District have failed to change the number of freshmen failing to move up to sophomore status.
When school began this year, more than 1,000 of last year’s district freshmen were held back because they need to repeat English or math, according to the district.
That’s roughly the same number as in each of the past two years.
These are kids most in danger of dropping out of school entirely, not only hurting their own lots in life but those of a whole community that could use more educated, prosperous and taxpaying people.
The main goal is to keep high-risk students in school, said Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Joe Thompson.
“We don’t save them all. We don’t,” he said. “But we’re doing as much as we can to keep them in school.”
Some good news
High schools have their work cut out for them when freshmen arrive on campus: A recent national report found that about 70 percent of all eighth-graders read below grade level.
KHSD welcomes students from 26 feeder schools and 50 percent to 75 percent enter freshman year below grade level, said KHSD board member Ken Mettler.
“There is tons of room for improvement to get the 26 feeder districts’ curriculum better aligned with the high school curriculum so the students arrive on campus ready to pass English and math,” Mettler said.
There are signs the program is doing good.
Although many freshmen are still being “held back” to pass math and English, or earn 45 credits, nearly two-thirds of the students who didn’t move up to be sophomores in 2008, and who are now seniors, have passed one or both sections of the high school exit exam.
A student gets up to eight chances to pass the test during high school.
9GR works, and it helps them with the exit exam, said Katie Kleier, director of instruction and guidance.
But Arvin High math teacher Blaine Hawkins thinks with the policy, the district is cooking the books on test scores.
He said district schools inflate their Academic Performance Index, or API, scores by holding failing freshmen back, so they miss taking the high school exit exam as sophomores — when the pass rate counts for the school.
It’s equivalent to telling the lowest five kids in each class to stay home so the class average will go up, said Hawkins.
Hawkins said Arvin does great remediation programs, and wonderful things to help these kids, but hiding them from the test doesn’t help them.
He points to the 36 percent and 40 percent pass rates on the math and English sections of the exit exam taken by juniors last year, half the sophomore pass rates of 78 percent and 77 percent.
Freshman repeaters jump to junior status after they meet the promotion policy requirements, so they take the exit exam for the first time as juniors and contribute to the lower pass rates.
Hawkins said class designation labels don’t motivate failing students.
“The students who are so far behind that we’re making them ‘froshmores’ are probably not the ones who are going to be shamed by being called freshmen a second time,” Hawkins said.
Mettler refuted the idea that the freshman promotion policy was tied to the exit exam.
“It was never a consideration,” he said.
Focused approach
This year, Golden Valley High grouped its 80 9GRs in a block that attends history, English and science classes together, and has a dedicated counselor. A math teacher also works closely with the group.
Students get more individual attention.
“It’s still new, but as far as how things have gone, it’s a step that looks to be working well,” said history teacher Dustin Green.
For many of the freshmen, “things didn’t go quite right for a lot of reasons,” said Green, who said maturity and the added focus would get some caught up on credits.
Kleier is enthusiastic about the district’s push this year toward professional learning communities, where teachers spend more time collaborating and coming up with specific teaching strategies — for all levels of students.
There is good reason to support and motivate students to finish high school.
High school dropouts earn, on average, $10,000 a year less than high school graduates. Over a lifetime, the difference between the earnings of a high school dropout and a college graduate is more than $1 million, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education.
When more people earn more money, it benefits society as a whole by way of taxes — as much as $45 billion more annually, if the high school dropout rate were cut in half, according to a recent report by Columbia University’s Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at its Teachers College.
