Bused-in Students Tend to Avoid Advanced Classes : Segregation by Scholastic Challenge?

Mathematics teacher Nyunt Maung says there is only one student from the Permit With Transportation program enrolled in each of his four elective advanced math classes.

By contrast, shop teacher Richard Melton reports that PWT students comprise more than half of the students in his four elective beginning wood shop classes.

The two stories from Taft High School in Woodland Hills illustrate what many faculty members believe is a disturbing consequence of the PWT program. While the program provides a “cultural education” that would be missed at a racially segregated campus, few of the minority students bused to Taft under the voluntary desegregation plan advance beyond the required introductory courses.

Teachers at Taft--a school with a reputation for high academic achievement--say the majority of PWT students, who make up almost one-third of the school’s student body, lack the training and attitude needed to enroll in advanced and honors classes.

As a result, a number of the school’s classrooms remain segregated--the very pattern that PWT was created to break down.

School district officials said they believe such descriptions of classroom distribution among PWT students are atypical. But districtwide figures support several other impressions gained by visiting Taft.

Last year, students enrolled in the PWT program took 10% fewer college-preparatory courses than their peers living within a school’s attendance area. PWT students as a group earned a grade-point average of 2.5 on a 4.0 scale. Resident students averaged 2.78.

In addition, results of a survey of graduating seniors last year showed that the proportion of bused-in students who will be eligible for the state’s public universities after graduation is roughly half the rate for resident students.

PWT students averaged 40 points lower on the verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and 57 points lower in mathematics than their resident peers.

Such findings raise questions about the program’s success.

“I don’t consider them integrated,” said Board of Education member Rita Walters, referring to PWT receiver schools like Taft. “We have a desegregation program, and I think there is a real difference between desegregation and integration. We’re moving youngsters into those schools. I’m not convinced we’ve taken the necessary moves to integrate them and make them a part, warp and woof, of that school life.”

Although the busing program is a decade old, the district has never conducted a study to determine why parents enroll their children in the program or to track the academic progress of PWT students to compare their performance with children from the same neighborhood who remained in the local school.

Floraline Stevens, director of the district’s research and evaluation division, said that kind of tracking would be very difficult and that it would be impossible to gather figures that would show whether PWT students were getting a better education for their commuting and integrating pains.

Such studies do not appear to exist in any other district that has a voluntary desegregation program.

“It’s what people perceive. What you perceive is what you believe,” she said. “If you feel that going to a different place will be a better situation, then you’re going to do those things that will make that feeling come true.”

School district statisticians declined to filter out figures for Taft’s PWT students, and Taft Principal Charles Caballero said he does not separate PWT students from the school’s resident students in record-keeping at any level, either academic or disciplinary. To do so, he said, would encourage the attitude that bused-in students do not have an equal right to attend the school.

“If you were to keep records and highlight every time a kid on a bus does something, negatively or positively, you’re separating him from being a kid that belongs here,” Caballero said. “Anytime a student hears a teacher say, ‘If you can’t keep up, why don’t you go back to your school?’ the kids know to come to me and tell me because this is their school.”

Joseph Caldera, who helps coordinate several of the district’s voluntary busing programs, acknowledged that parents are on their own in attempting to determine which school might offer a better education.

For example, Caldera noted, the predominantly minority schools that provide many PWT youngsters qualify for more money than a predominantly white Valley school would.

‘Extra Support Packages’

“Those schools get the extra support packages and lower class sizes, and there are kids who stay home because they want to take advantage of those at their neighborhood school,” Caldera said.

“Some parents may feel that the school at the end of the bus ride is better. But as far as we have in writing, when parents fill out an application for PWT, they are agreeing to participate in voluntary integration with no mention of whether the education is better at one place or the other.”

PWT students at Taft said friends and relatives attending their old neighborhood schools tell them the schooling they are receiving in the Valley is superior to what is available at home.

“My cousins say if we were to come back to the L.A. schools, we would be getting all A’s because it’s so much harder out in the Valley,” said a PWT student, who asked that her name not be used.

Although she is earning a C average at Taft, she said students she met while attending summer classes at Fremont High School in South-Central Los Angeles told her she was learning more at Taft than she would have at a neighborhood school.

English teacher Fran Oberman, who taught at an inner-city junior high school before coming to Taft, said PWT students tell her that they received higher grades from teachers at their home schools than they have at Taft.

“In the inner city, I saw kids getting Bs for practically nothing, compared to what a kid has to do here to get a B,” Oberman said. “I’ve seen kids come in with A’s and Bs on their (grade) cards and then they come here and they fail.

‘Too Hard for Them’

“It isn’t even their fault. They’re doing what they always did, but they’re not getting the same grades for it. . . . Some kids told me that they were transferring back because it was too hard for them out here.”

Teachers at Taft said there are noticeable differences between bused-in students and students from Woodland Hills.

“It seems that most of the kids coming in from other areas just don’t enroll in the upper-level academic classes,” said Bryan Robles, a science teacher at the school.

As an example, Robles noted that all students are required to take a science course, but life science, an introductory-level course that does not count toward University of California admission, has a reputation for being easier than biology, which is a college-preparatory class.

“One of my life science classes has about 85% PWT in it,” he said.

Course Prerequisites

Robles said the biology courses also require that students understand algebra, which PWT coordinator Yasmin Delahoussaye said may hold down enrollment by PWT students in upper-level courses.

“If a kid doesn’t have pre-algebra in junior high school, they can’t take algebra here,” she said. “If you don’t have algebra, you can’t take biology or computer science or a lot of the other higher courses.”

Delahoussaye complained that junior high school counselors often use standardized test scores to determine which classes newly bused-in students should take, despite criticism among educators that standardized test scores do not always properly reflect a student’s potential to succeed in advanced classes.

“They’ll decide the kid isn’t ready for the classes they need to get on the right track for high school,” she said.

As a result, said math teacher Maung, who chairs Taft’s math department, PWT students are forced to select less challenging courses, such as remedial math and consumer math, hampering the integration that administrators would like to see.

No ‘Chance to Intermingle’

“They don’t get a chance to intermingle with the other kids in a classroom situation because they tend to take basic math classes together, with their friends,” Maung said. “As the department chairman, how do I break that up when there aren’t enough white kids to go around?”

Many Taft teachers said in interviews that PWT students earn an unusually large share of the failing grades. Others complained that many PWT students routinely cut classes and seem unconcerned about academic achievement--a finding that was puzzling to the teachers because of their perception that most of the bused-in students are motivated enough to put up with long bus rides from minority communities.

Some bused-in students said they believe they must combat another perception--that they are less capable than their classmates.

“What they’re doing is, they’re saying they don’t think we can do as good before they even give us a chance,” said a PWT student who is a member of a new teacher-student committee designed to smooth the relationship.

“When I first started being bused (in the sixth grade), I did feel like whites had a little more to start with because they were taught from a young age. It took until I got to Taft before I felt like I was caught up. . . . But I’ve been in Valley schools forever and I feel like I’m doing good.”

David Jay, coordinator of Taft’s classes for gifted and talented pupils, said there usually are few PWT students in the advanced programs at the school.

But, like many teachers, Jay said he regarded the classroom breakdown as a fact of life.

“The kids who come in will be the kids who feel they can deal with that situation,” Jay said about the honors classes. “I don’t have any way of knowing whether they are PWT or not and I don’t concern myself with that. Kids choose their own classes here. They always have.”

Principal Caballero said that as long as students are “grouping themselves,” the addition of PWT students does not force teachers to lower their standards, as many Valley parents fear.

Lower Standards Not Seen

“One of the things I’m finding out is that teachers here are maintaining certain high standards and that can get really rough for the kid who came in here without the proper foundation,” Caballero said.

But many teachers said that the general decline in abilities over the past few years among all students at the school has forced a few changes.

“The standards we had when the school was all-resident cannot be enforced, but I just don’t know whether that’s the kids coming in or all the students in general,” dance and health instructor Anne Newman said.

“I have heard many teachers say they have had to readjust their course content for a regular class and take some material out. . . . With me, it’s not a matter that I have dropped an A from a 90 to an 80. I have simply had to pull out some material that would have been enlightening and enriching.”

An English teacher, who asked not to be named, said her fellow instructors have told her that teaching a class with a majority of PWT students requires reducing academic expectations.

“Teachers feel as if they should change just because these kids are coming in,” she said. “They feel as if their standards are going to have to be lowered if they are going to show a good balance between passes and fails.”

The training required for a student to be ready for upper-level courses in high school must begin before a child enters junior high school, administrators said.

Background Noted

“It’s the socioeconomic background that you’re dealing with here. So much of it involves early experience,” said Taft head counselor Gordon McBain. “In a home stressing college and education from a very early age, you’re not likely to find that student in a basic reading class in high school.

“Students from a disadvantaged background, some of them will overcome that and will shine, but they have to work even harder to stay there.”

Caballero said he has been frustrated by a lack of funding for longer and more frequent counseling sessions.

“I’m not talking just shuffling the kids into classes but actually sitting down and giving the kid some positive reinforcement, some encouragement,” Caballero said. “You need to build this thing into them that they can do it, if they try . “

Once the students are coaxed into the upper-level classes, Caballero said, tutoring and additional counseling service must be available to check on them during the course of the year.

Follow-up Needed

“We have some peer tutoring services we’re getting going, but we also need . . . the periodic follow-up. You know, ‘How are you doing? What areas do you need help in?’ ” he said. “You can’t just put them in there and think you’ve done what you need to.”

Without the financial backing to provide the additional services educationally disadvantaged students need, teachers said the adjustment to a new social and academic environment can be rocky.

“Coming out to the Valley can be a shock for them if they haven’t been in the PWT program for a while,” said Angela Hewlett, an English teacher at Taft. “They have to adjust. It’s a different way of life out here. . . . (Black and Latino students) begin to discover the casual way of talking to each other, the slang they may use with friends back home sets them apart here.”

Last month the school initiated tardy sweeps to round up students loitering in the halls during class. Although several counselors and teachers said there were equal numbers of PWT and resident students caught in the sweeps, others--who pointed out that bused-in students make up less than one-third of the school’s total student population--said privately that the majority of those “captured” during the roundups were PWT students.

Again, administrators said no effort is made to break the numbers down to find out which group of students was cutting class more frequently.

Administrators defended the PWT students by pointing out that many seniors do not have a full six-period day.

“If you’re a local student, you can get in your car and go home,” PWT coordinator Delahoussaye said. “But if you’re PWT, where do you go? They’ve got to wait for their bus to take them home later in the afternoon.”

Teachers, however, said the truancy and tardy problems were not limited to the end of the day.

“It seems a lot of these kids get up in the morning, they take the bus, and then they cut class. And this seems to be a pattern they’ve established at home,” said dance teacher Newman. “They don’t seem to have the concept in their head that school is a business and it has to be taken seriously.”

“I sometimes think that the ones who are serious would be the ones who are bused in because they’re not going to go to all the trouble of coming out here if they’re not going to work at it,” science teacher Robles said. “But then you find out that they came not because of the school, but because a lot of their friends were on the bus.”

‘Wasting Their Energies’

“There are (PWT) kids who are taking advantage of the educational opportunity offered to them, maybe 10 or 15%,” said math teacher Maung. “The rest of them are wasting their energies arguing with the teachers, going out of the classroom, thinking up a never-ending series of excuses to be out of the classroom. . . . Many of the kids are extremely brilliant. They are simply channeling their brilliance in a completely different way.”

Black PWT students “don’t know how to handle themselves in this environment,” said Earl Myers, a black Woodland Hills resident who attends Taft. “I don’t think there’s any difference in ability between a black PWT kid and a black from around here. . . . The teachers out there just don’t push as hard as they do here in the Valley and (PWT students) have to catch up when they get here.”

Teachers at Taft, hoping to find solutions to some of the problems, have set up a PWT-Teacher Support Group. The task force, which meets on Mondays during lunch, has attracted about 30 bused-in students to its committees on tutoring, transportation, discipline, and extracurricular activities.

Coaxing Students Back to Class

Rosemarie Lewis, a senior PWT student who volunteered to work on the discipline committee, said members of her group have begun patrolling the halls to coax students--both PWT and resident--back into class.

“For the PWTs, what we’re trying to tell them is ‘Why travel all that way to hang out in the halls? What’s the point in getting out of bed at 5 in the morning just to come cut class?’ ” Rosemarie said. “You could do that just as easily in L.A.”

Other members of the task force, however, say reports of PWT behavior problems have been exaggerated. The ditching problem, teachers and students said, has been occurring because Taft is still adjusting to having an additional 1,000 ninth-grade students on campus as part of the district’s campus reconfiguration in September.

‘Blaming the PWT’

“It’s not just the PWT. It’s everyone out there in the halls, but they’re only blaming the PWT,” said a PWT student member of the task force, who said her mother asked that her name not be used. “The school is overcrowded, and they’re losing control and instead of saying it’s just some people doing it, they’re just saying it’s PWT.”

Teachers remain perplexed by the question of motivation.

“I can think of several real success stories and I hate to generalize, but PWT students as a group get many of the fails and Ds because they don’t even attempt the assignments,” said one teacher, who asked not to be identified to avoid alienating PWT students in her classes. “Many of them, they’re so bright, but what can I grade them on?”

Virtually all of the more than a dozen Taft teachers interviewed said the lower grades PWT students receive are a result more of their background than their lack of skill.

“It’s not a matter of whether or not the kid is mentally capable. It’s a matter of how he or she has been trained at home,” said dance teacher Newman.

Taft High, Woodland Hills Ethnic Breakdown

1983 Neighbor- 1973 1979 1983 hood Census Black 1.4% 14.3% 16.9% 1.1% Asian 1.0 2.9 6.2 2.2 Latino 2.0 1.8 6.6 4.3 Anglo 95.3 80.7 70.2 94.9

1983 PWT Enrollment % ---- 29%