TV Show Shines Light on Academic Achievement

At the end of the first round of “KidQuiz,” a locally produced children’s television program, teams representing the sixth graders of Carson’s Ambler Avenue Magnet School and Arleta’s Canterbury Avenue Magnet School were tied with 40 points each.

As the second round began, emotions were high and the mood was tense. It was then that Canterbury team captain Dilip Ramji made his move.

Dilip was quick on the buzzer as he confidently identified the animal on the monitor screen as a llama. Then it was Dilip again, identifying the photograph of baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. And it was Dilip once more telling “KidQuiz” host Maclovio Perez that the photograph on the screen was an abacus before Perez had a chance to read the entire question.

Dilip’s momentum continued as he beat out the Ambler team and his own teammates with his correct identification of Diane Sawyer as the first woman reporter to be a regular on the CBS television program “60 Minutes.”

Record Winning Score

When the Saturday morning taping of the program (to be shown on KCBS Channel 2 at 6:30 a.m. May 11) was completed, Canterbury had racked up 460 points, the highest winning score in the short history of “KidQuiz.” Ambler posted a more than respectable showing of 200 points. Canterbury will be invited back to participate in the “playoffs” to win a prize for the school.

As classmates ran up to the stage to congratulate both teams, Canterbury’s Matt Klein gave teammate Gaby Calzadillas a “high-five” hand slap and the television studio took on the air of an athletic field filled with adoring fans congratulating their victorious heroes.

This linking of academic achievement and team competition is becoming more commonplace in public education as teachers and administrators look for ways to give academic high achievers the same rewards and prestige as athletes.

‘Mental Agility’ Ignored

“Educators have grown uncomfortable with the fact that a school’s greatest rewards often go to those who perform well on the football field rather than to those who perform well in the classroom,” said Ernest L. Boyer, president of New York-based Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “Our heroes were those with physical prowess, not those with mental agility. In the past five years, there has been a concerted effort to overcome the priorities of the past.”

Academic competition has been around for years. There have been essay contests, speech competitions, scholastic rivalries for college scholarships and science fairs. But the hoopla surrounding academic competition is a new wrinkle.

For example, at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Academic Decathlon, which was held last fall at El Camino High School in Woodland Hills, the 52 teams entered the school’s gymnasium for the Super Quiz competition behind members of the All-City Marching Band. The contestants wore team jackets or team sweat shirts and were met with roars of approval from fans who were jammed into the stands.

‘Academic Jackets’

At Westchester High School in West Los Angeles, seniors who have a grade-point average of 3.5 or better are given “academic jackets” that resemble letterman jackets worn by athletes. Sophomores and juniors who have high grade averages are given certificates of merit.

This year, the jackets were presented to 26 seniors at an assembly where all of their classmates could watch. Joseph Linscomb, the school district’s associate superintendent of instruction, and former heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton presented the jackets to the seniors.

There was a little less of the spectacle at Osceola Street Elementary School in Sylmar where students in the third and sixth grades competed against each other in the Bookmaster Tournament. In this competition, questions are based on a book that the class has been assigned to read. The questions--based on books such as “Tom Sawyer,” “Call of the Wild” and “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”--range from the names of minor characters and identification of locales where the action takes place to identification of famous lines and quotes.

In the Reading Champions competition, sponsored by the March of Dimes, students find sponsors who promise to donate money to the March of Dimes for every book they read. When the number of books the students have read is tallied and the donations turned in, the students are presented with gold, silver and bronze medals at an assembly.

Proud of Medals

“It’s really something to see the kids on the stage with the medals hanging around their necks,” said Marvin Roth, principal of Vaughn Street Elementary School in Pacoima. “They are so proud of their accomplishment and the fun of the competition, and the award ceremony in no way detracts from the real purpose of the program--to raise money for the March of Dimes and to get kids to read.”

Schools in poorer neighborhoods are often the most enthusiastic supporters of high-visibility academic competition. At these schools, it is a way to show students that they are able to compete with students from more affluent backgrounds, administrators say. For example, when Dorsey High School’s team won the Super Quiz, the jewel in the crown of the Academic Decathlon, for the second time in three years, it was a major accomplishment for the predominantly black school located in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles.

“When the media starts to report the accomplishments of students who hit the books in the same way they report the accomplishments of football and basketball players, then schools like Dorsey will start turning on students just like sports turns them on now,” said Daniel Spetner, Dorsey’s Academic Decathlon coach.

Equal Recognition

The Carnegie Foundation’s Boyer traces the start of the most recent academic spectacles to a 1983 Texas commission that investigated deficiencies in that state’s public education system. One of the conclusions of that commission was that public schools should heap the same amount of praise on academic accomplishments as the schools did for students who achieved recognition in athletics.

There are others who say the start of high-visibility academic competition was in Orange County where School Supt. Robert Peterson created the Academic Decathlon. Peterson came up with the idea of a 10-event competition as a way of putting “some dazzle” into studying subjects some students consider dull.

KCBS’s reason for initiating “KidQuiz” were not all altruistic and educationally motivated. For several years, the local CBS affiliate has produced a children’s television program. The last one, “LA Kid,” was a “Phil Donahue-type” talk show where the host got youngsters to discuss their feelings about problems and issues of the day.

Game Show Inspiration

That program had run its course, and programming director Jerry Strong and “KidQuiz” producer Carmen Phillips were trying to come up with an idea for an in-studio show that could accommodate the hectic schedule of host Perez, who is also a weatherman on local newscasts.

Strong and Phillips had worked together many years ago on an adult game show called “Lucky Pair.” The game show concept is riding a wave of popularity within the television community, so Strong and Phillips decided to adapt the popular 1960s TV intellectual teaser “College Bowl” for elementary-school students.

“We wanted something exciting, something that people watching at home would actually find interesting,” Phillips said.

To come up with questions for the program, the “KidQuiz” production crew went to the Los Angeles school district to get someone to write questions and to be the in-studio judge. The school district selected Jeane Yamamoto, the principal of Brooklyn Avenue Elementary School in East Los Angeles.

Quick Answers Needed

Yamamoto says she has to have at least 100 questions prepared two weeks in advance of each show. “It is a lot different than the questions that you might ask in a classroom situation because here you want quick one-word or two-word answers. In school, we are looking for answers that show a deeper understanding of the subject matter.”

“KidQuiz” is divided into two three-round segments. The first round consists of spoken questions and a correct answer is worth 10 points. The second round has questions using visual aids and correct answers are worth 20 points. The final round is the “board game,” and the team that comes up with the highest number of correct answers is awarded 25 points.

At the end of the first segment, two of the three team members go offstage and are replaced by two other students. This gives more students from each class an opportunity to appear on television.

Questions are based on standard school subjects such as mathematics, history, English, geography and science, as well as current events.

Stumped by Harrison

Both the Ambler and Canterbury teams were stumped on which U.S. President served only one month of his elected term (William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia a month after his 1841 inauguration). Canterbury won 25 points for listing the names of more cities and towns in California than Ambler. (Canterbury’s list was headed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, Studio City and, of course, included Arleta).

“The make-up of the questions was very good,” said Nancy Oda, a teacher and “KidQuiz” coach for the Canterbury Magnet sixth grade. “There were questions from the curriculum and questions from real life.”

Oda said students from her class nominated and voted for those who would be included on the team. Then the entire class worked on drills to help them prepare for the game.

Janice Carter, teacher and coach of the Ambler sixth-grade team, said students for her school’s team were chosen because they scored well on a battery of tests. After the team was chosen, the group worked with teachers on questions and game techniques.

Class Devoted to Preparation

Preparing students for academic competitions isn’t unusual these days. Most members of Los Angeles school district Academic Decathlon teams take an elective class that drills and prepares the students for competition.

It is the emphasis on getting the best students for the team and the preparation for competition that worries Boyer of the Carnegie Foundation.

“Wouldn’t it be ironic if, in an attempt to compensate for the misplaced emphasis on athletics, schools do the same thing with all of this academic competition?” Boyer asked.

“KidQuiz” host Perez said that the winner and loser aspect of the show bothers him a little. When he talks to the students before the taping, Perez said that he tells them it is just a game and that they are all winners for being there.

“Hosting this show is personally more satisfying for me than, let’s say, hosting a talk show,” said Perez. “It’s educational, but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s like Bill Cosby says, ‘Don’t look too close kids, because you might learn something.’ ”