Lessons in Responsibility

In the beginning of the semester, my Spanish 3 class had 53 students. About 10 had no chairs, so they sat on the windowsills. Another five stood, leaning against the wall. I thought about writing about it for my school paper, so I went to talk with the head counselor.

He said that since it was an advanced class, he expected many students to drop it. Where was the support and encouragement? They should be telling us, “You can do it!”

It’s upsetting to look around and see all the problems at my school. My psychology book is from 1986; I waited two months for a calculus book; when my Spanish teacher was out for three weeks, we had three different subs, none of whom progressed a page in the book; the copy machine in the office often breaks down, making it hard for teachers to make copies. If you are wondering why I don’t change schools, it is because I love Marshall. The problems facing my school are not unique to my school.

My teachers are aware of the problems. The teacher for whom I have the greatest respect told my dad at back-to-school night that if he had teenagers, he would work three jobs to send them to a private school. The same teacher always alludes to the administrators’ indifference. He says that the “people downstairs” don’t care about what is happening in the classrooms, and that is why they left the classroom to begin with. He says that when you enter their offices, it’s like walking into a little palace.

Like my teacher, I was under the impression that the district didn’t really care about what happened to us “little people” who are stuffed in a room with 40 others without air-conditioning.

Going Right to the Top

Then I went to see Bob Collins, head of the high school division, at his district office downtown. The lobby of the office was crowded with little cubicles. There seemed to be a lot of commotion: It was 8 in the morning and the phones were ringing off the hook as school administrators tried to figure out how to deal with the new bilingual education requirements. When I met Mr. Collins, it seemed like he had already done a full day’s work. He looked like he had just finished yelling at somebody on the phone and my appointment was one more thing he had to deal with.

When I told him that many of the students and teachers think that the district doesn’t care, he looked shocked and angry.

Why would they have that perception?

“Well,” I said, “we have dirty bathrooms, old books and teachers who can’t teach.

“Let me see your textbooks,” he said.

I pulled my 12-year-old psychology book out of my backpack. It looks like someone had dropped it in a puddle on their way to school. The pages are wavy with water damage, stained, stuck together and marked by many previous students.

Mr. Collins flipped through it. “I would tell your teacher to get you a new book.”

I later asked my teacher why we couldn’t get new books. He said he wasn’t sure he was going to teach AP Psych next year, so it might be a waste of money, and besides, the school didn’t have money for new books.

But that’s not what Mr. Collins said. He said, “The district provided Marshall High over $100,000 to purchase new texts. . . . So when you say you don’t have new books, I suggest you see your principal.”

When I mentioned it to my principal, he said, “There is money for new books, and you should talk to your teacher again.” The principal said he would try to get me a new book by next semester.

Collins stressed that good teaching is essential to students’ success and admitted that some teachers cannot teach well. “It is fair to say that in any high school there are some outstanding teachers and some that need significant help.”

He noted that teaching doesn’t attract highly qualified candidates. To emphasize his point, he asked me what I wanted to do when I “grew up.” I said I wanted to go into law. He said a beginning lawyer makes $65,000 to $75,000 a year, about twice as much as most teachers.

“The issue is, how much do we value teachers and teaching?” Collins asked. “Do we value the profession enough to compensate it?”

That wasn’t the only big question that arose as I researched the problems with our schools. How do we know that teachers are doing their job? How much money is enough? Who decides how the money is spent? And if student test scores are low, whose fault is it?

I talked to two school board members, my principal, one of my teachers and Mr. Collins, and at the end one thing became clear: Everyone is pointing fingers and no one seems to want to take responsibility. The teachers and administrators say the students are responsible for getting a good education. The administrators and students say some of the teachers aren’t doing a good job. The teachers and students don’t think the administrators care. Everyone thinks that the system is falling apart. Amid all this clamor one thing seems to get lost: a good public education.

Improving the quality of teaching

Firing bad teachers is useless, according to school board member David Tokofsky, who used to teach at Marshall. When the district fires a teacher, the district is forced to lower its standards in order to find a replacement.

The lack of good teachers can be explained by an urgent need for teachers and a shortage of qualified job candidates.

All an applicant needs to apply for a job as a teacher in the district is a bachelor’s degree and a passing score on the C-BEST test. Candidates are trained while they work on “emergency credentials.” In fact, 10% to 20% of the district’s teachers are on emergency credentials, Tokofsky said. He added that 65% of the district’s math classes are taught by someone who didn’t major in math in college.

What do low test scores mean?

Half the students who enter the Cal State system have to take remedial classes in English and math. California is in the 32nd percentile when it comes to the Stanford 9 tests. To me, these numbers demonstrate that we are not learning as much as we should.

But everyone I talked to had a different response. School Board President Victoria Castro said that scoring below the national average does not mean that we are doing poorly. Stanford 9 compares how the students in California do in contrast to the students in the other 49 states. Since the test scores are curved, someone always has to be in the bottom.

When I told board member Tokofsky about this, he replied that he didn’t know what she was talking about. Mr. Tokofsky thinks that scores on standardized tests should be used to measure a teacher’s performance.

Mr. Collins said he didn’t think teachers should be judged by the results of a standardized test given to a student the first year he or she enters university. “It’s important, it concerns me,” Collins said, “but I’m far more interested in other factors that a student learns in the classroom.”

Mr. Collins argued that standardized tests don’t always measure a student’s knowledge in the order that the student studied it. For example, students learn U.S. history in the eighth and the 10th grades, but the Stanford 9 tests the students on U.S. history in the ninth grade. He also said that the tests are not fair to “urban populations”--minorities and those from low-income groups.

My principal, Tom Abraham, said students score low on the tests because they have bad test-taking skills and they’re not being prepared specifically for those tests. (But if the Cal State entrance exam measures basic skills in math and English, why do we need to prepare for them?)

My history teacher, Bob Grakal, said kids are to blame for their low scores. Look at your class, he told me. Half of you don’t read the book on the night that it’s assigned, so we can’t have a discussion. You wait until the night before the test. He added that kids are distracted from their schoolwork by sports, jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends and after-school activities.

We must work together

Even with all the faults with our system, there are many positive things taking place. More students are involved with the AP program, the academic decathlon program, and speech and debate teams, which regularly compete with, and win over, private school students. Even with all the unqualified teachers, there are some great ones. My three-pound calculus book (the one I waited two months for) is great. In addition, the dropout rate has decreased.

Students can do their share to make sure that they receive a good education. They can take rigorous classes and do the assigned work. In addition, they can report to their teachers and principals when they have an inadequate sub. Supt. Ruben Zacarias has allocated a large sum of money for textbooks. There is no reason why any student in L.A. Unified should be without a book. Mr. Collins said, “You tell me the student that doesn’t have a textbook, and I will walk out there and put a new textbook in their hands.”

And if you want clean bathrooms, keep them clean. It is we, the students, who stuff paper towels in the sink, throw wet balls of paper at the ceiling and tag the walls. Most schools have school-based management meetings where students can bring up issues that concern them.

We have to start taking responsibility. We have to stop pointing fingers and start working as a team if we want to get the education we deserve.