LAUSD Plans to Establish Districtwide Standards

As state education officials begin work on high school graduation standards for California students, Los Angeles city schools may have unified local standards for elementary, middle and high school students as early as spring.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials say the creation of statewide academic standards supports their own efforts to improve student performance. Last week, state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin announced her recommendations for a set of high school standards, which will undergo a series of statewide public hearings, including one Wednesday at the Convention Center.

The proposed California high school graduation standards, which may eventually require students to pass an exam before receiving a diploma, are consistent with an ambitious effort that Los Angeles city schools started months earlier with the help of state education officials.

“The standards are a positive step in the right direction,” said Jim Konantz, director of career development for the Los Angeles district.

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Eastin’s call for the statewide standards, which will define what students need to know by the time they finish high school, is a move away from California’s historically decentralized public school system. Curriculum, even in the same grade, now varies widely. Individual school districts in California are allowed to adopt their own academic standards, and each school can create its own standards.

The goal, Eastin said, is to ensure that students do not graduate from high school ill-prepared for the job market or college. Many freshmen in the California State University system are taking remedial math and English classes.

Consistent high school standards, Eastin said, “are essential to every kid, regardless of whether they attend Stanford or go into the work force after high school.”

The Los Angeles school district’s new standards cover four subjects--history, science, language arts and math--for elementary, middle and high schools. The so-called Student Learning Standards were created by a task force of students, teachers and administrators.

Under the plan, students will be tested in the fourth, eighth and 10th grades, allowing educators to track their performance and decide whether they need help in specific areas, said Konantz. The first tests are expected to be administered this spring to students in grades one to 10.

In addition, teachers will be trained to help students meet the new requirements. Each school will decide how the teacher training will work, said Joan Evans, director of instructional services.

By next fall, all incoming ninth-graders will be held to the district’s new high-school standards.

Konantz said the district’s plan will most likely parallel the state’s standards. The proposed statewide standards would require high school students to take two lab science courses such as biology or chemistry, as well as algebra and geometry, four English courses, a foreign language and visual and performing arts course.

“The whole nation is talking about standards right now,” Eastin said. “This is one of the few places where we’ve said this is important.”

California’s plan was compiled by the California Education Round Table, a group composed of Eastin, leaders from three public college systems and representatives of the California Postsecondary Education Commission and the Assn. of Independent California Colleges.

Creating state standards has been part of a national agenda in education reform for several years. In March 1995, three federal laws were passed requiring the development of nationwide standards and a testing method by March 1997, prompting the work to create standards in Los Angeles. Since then, nearly every state has been drafting its own academic standards.

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Los Angeles students had mixed views about the behind-the-scenes work being done on their behalf. While most agreed that everybody should have four years of high school English, they were split on how much math was necessary.

“Algebra and calculus you wouldn’t need in the real world,” said Henry Tobar, a senior at El Camino Real High School. “You just need to know basic math like addition, division, your percentages and stuff.”

The 17-year-old took basic high school mathematics and later dropped out of algebra. In addition to academic classes at his Woodland Hills school, Henry takes automotive classes at the West Valley Occupational Center in Winnetka.

“Like in a body shop,” he explained, “you need to know how much money you’re gonna make or charge a person, but you don’t need to know calculus or trigonometry or that stuff.”

Henry’s classmate Wes Fisher disagreed.

“I think it’s important to know certain things because you never know when they’re going to come up again in your life,” said Wes, also 17. “I had to do something one day and I ended up using algebra formulas to answer the question, and it wasn’t in a class.”

For the most part, educators agree with setting statewide standards, but some say that alone is not enough.

“The standards are just one part of the equation,” said Barbara Yanuck, college advisor at Cleveland High School in Reseda. “If you don’t have good teaching behind that or the right testing or intervening when a child isn’t doing well in the subject, there’s a problem.”

Yanuck said she worries most about the district’s long-standing practice of advancing students on the basis of age and attendance, rather than achievement. Fewer than 1% of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders were held back in the 1994-95 school year, despite the estimated 30% who had Ds or Fs in one or more academic subjects, according to district records.

“These students are moved on from middle school and they come to us completely unprepared,” she said. “You have to try in the ninth grade to take children in English and math who have no preparation because they failed in the eighth, seventh and sixth grades.”

LAUSD officials have not decided whether they will change their policy and hold back students who fail to pass the new district standards.

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A few teachers, such as Linda Gordon, wonder if students who do not plan to attend college should be required to take advanced math classes such as trigonometry.

“If you give a kid good basic math skills, they learn the related math they need to be able to do their job. Why do they need three years of math?” said Gordon, who teaches algebra at Grant High School in Van Nuys.

But Eastin said the high-technology jobs that many high school graduates dream of--as well as civil-service jobs such as firefighter and police officer--call for more than what she calls “Mickey Mouse” courses that supply basic math and English skills.

A report by the Washington, D.C.-based National Alliance for Business showed that 43% of American businesses had to offer new employees remedial training in 1995, more than double the percentage that reported doing so in 1984.

“It may be overwhelming for a kid today who’s a junior or senior to take one of these math courses--like geometry or trigonometry--but it’s worth it for them in the end,” Eastin said.