Board Drops L.A. Schools’ No-Fail Policy

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Monday to drop the no-fail part of its pioneering policy requiring that students who participate in extracurricular activities meet minimum academic standards.

The 5-2 vote, with board members Rita Walters and Leticia Quezada dissenting, came after a highly emotional, 1 1/2-hour debate.

Effective immediately, students in grades 4 through 12 who receive a single failing grade will no longer be barred from extracurricular activities as long as they maintain an overall average of C.

Led by Walters in a unanimous board vote late in 1982, the Los Angeles Unified School District became the first in the nation to require students to meet minimal academic standards to participate in sports, drama, music and scores of other activities conducted outside regular school hours.

Other districts across the United States soon followed suit and, in 1987, a state law extended the C-average requirement to schoolchildren throughout California.

The no-fail provision of the policy has remained controversial in the seven years the policy has been in effect in the 600,000-student Los Angeles district.

Some of that controversy could be heard in the divided testimony Monday night.

“Please do not take a backward step” by diluting the policy, John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, urged board members.

In addition, the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, in a letter to the board, urged that the no-fail rule be kept. If the board insisted on dropping the rule, it should require failing students to get extra help to improve their grades, the NAACP suggested. The board referred the proposal to a committee for study.

Board member Julie Korenstein, who proposed the change, said the rule had discouraged students from taking challenging courses out of fear of failing and getting bounced from the choir, an athletic team or a play.

Two students, Kerry Lotts of North Hollywood High School and Sofia Paiz of Wilson High School, argued passionately for the board to keep the rule.

“Decreasing the rules will only make it easier for students to slack off,” said Paiz, who is student representative to the board.

“It’s my responsibility to keep up my grades,” said Paiz, who is taking advanced college-placement courses while serving as Wilson student body president and editor of her school paper. “And if I can do it, others can, too.”

Parents Jerry Gaines of San Pedro High School and Susan Wong of Venice High argued that the policy was unnecessarily punitive.

“We’ve seen really good kids who are really trying hard being blocked by this,” Wong said.

“The purpose of this policy was to say our mission . . . is education. There is no other reason for school to exist,” Walters pleaded, as it became increasingly clear that her colleagues were bent on the change.

Board President Jackie Goldberg said she disagreed with Walters and Quezada’s argument that to lower the standard would tell students that academics are not important.

Concerned about the dropout rate, Goldberg said extracurricular activities are sometimes “the only way we have of catching on and holding on in whatever it takes to make these kids decide to stay with us.”

In a voice filled with emotion, she told of a young baseball player who--disqualified from the team when he received his first-ever failing grade--left school 1 1/2 years before graduation.

“His family is devastated by this, as are all of us who care about him,” Goldberg said.