College-Prep Classes OKd for All San Diego Students

A fundamental revamping of secondary-school curriculum to give all San Diego city school students college-preparatory courses was approved Tuesday by the Board of Education.

If carried out over the next several years, the controversial proposal would have a significant impact on every student in the district, the nation’s eighth-largest, and place San Diego in the center of the nationwide educational reform movement.

As approved Tuesday, the plan’s thrust says that every student should be given the chance to handle college-preparatory work and that a strong core of study in mathematics, English, science and social studies should be a requirement for high school graduation.

Cautious Initial Steps

But the board decided to move cautiously with the first steps to carry out the common core. It accepted Supt. Thomas Payzant’s concern that the district must not err on key and expensive implementation issues, especially the need to give teachers new ideas on how to make more students successful and the need to convince teachers that more students can tackle difficult material if motivated.

Staff development and the need for greater academic help for students taking tougher courses involve new funds, and the board agreed with Payzant that the several million dollars required for districtwide implementation is not available.

As a result, the board voted 4-0 Tuesday, with member Kay Davis absent, to ask for six district schools to volunteer for a pilot project this spring.

Staffs at those schools will draw up plans on how common core can be put into effect, including the way remedial mathematics courses can be phased out, and how content in the four major subject areas can be made equal in all classrooms. Some of those plans not having major costs could also move forward at non-pilot schools.

However, the pilot schools would continue with a more extensive program next fall, involving a comprehensive teacher training program for all math and science teachers to improve their subject knowledge and classroom skills. There would also be major ongoing tutorial programs for students whose previous academic experiences left them short of skills needed for algebra and for extensive writing and discussions about world literature.

At Least $200,000 for Pilot

Those programs would cost a minimum of $200,000, and the board would have to include the expenditures in its 1988-89 school year budget, which it will begin deliberating later this spring.

Board members gave strong indication that they will approve funds for the pilot program through next year.

“I won’t support any budget later (this year) unless it includes the $200,000 because it’s crucial,” said Jim Roache, who along with board chairman Dorothy Smith originally proposed the common core last spring as a way to give all graduates basic skills in reading, writing and reasoning, which they believe necessary to cope in society.

During the last of three weeks of public hearings on Tuesday, the board again heard from some district teachers arguing that a strengthened curriculum would force more students uninterested in academic courses to drop out of school. Many students do not need such a curriculum because they are not going to go to college, said Rhoenna Armster, a business education teacher at Gompers Secondary School and the district’s teacher of the year.

Several math teachers told the board that algebra and geometry should not be required of all students because it is “useless” to a large percentage who will become carpenters and plumbers and who instead need basic arithmetic to understand fractions and decimals.

“But even a carpenter or plumber needs algebra and geometry in their work,” board member John Witt responded to Patrick Henry math teacher Audrey Chancer.

“No. They just plug in formulas. . . . They don’t have to know what (the concepts) mean,” Chancer retorted.

Biting Reaction

The exchange brought a caustic reaction from Smith, who told Chancer that the board would provide sufficient training for teachers such as Chancer because “we are depending on teachers like you inspiring students” to succeed at harder subjects.

“If I had used the relevance of what I studied in high school as a benchmark for taking courses, I would not have taken chemistry, or wood shop, or algebra,” said Roache, a commander with the San Diego County Sheriff. “But that kind of broad-based study is needed for me and others to be alert, productive citizens. . . . It is applicable to all students, majority or minority, and I am determined that this will occur.”

Both board member Susan Davis and Payzant emphasized how crucial district support of new teacher attitudes and teacher training would be.

“This is less a debate about individual (course content) than about attitudes,” Payzant said, pointing out that at Bell Junior High School--the largest west of the Mississippi River and with one of the district’s most ethnically diverse student bodies--77% of the students take algebra by the ninth grade. Payzant contrasted that to another unnamed junior high where only 37% of the students take algebra, saying, “It’s a fact, it can be done, and if you talk to teachers, not only are they using a lot of different techniques, they are working together as a team.

“This requires tremendous changes in attitudes . . . and that’s why teacher development is so important.”