Denying Easy Diplomas Won’t Solve the Problem

The Legislature’s recent passage of educational reform laws will bring two important changes to California schools: the end of social promotion, in which students are passed to the next grade even if they have not mastered the material, and the required passage of a high school exit exam before graduation.

These measures are supposed to raise test scores by prolonging students’ stay in school, but they may serve mainly to reveal an enormous problem: Our schools are filled with students who are not students.

Let me share with you two typical mornings from my job as an English teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I have changed the names of the students to protect their privacy.

I face the first 20 of my 100 ninth-graders. They come from throughout the San Fernando Valley and from the inner city. They represent a cross-section of ethnicity and backgrounds.

Of the 20 students this morning, perhaps three have brought their textbooks. The same three have done their homework and only they will study at all and receive a grade higher than a D on the next quiz. The rest of the class appears content to read and write at first- to third-grade levels. These students, keep in mind, have passed every grade since kindergarten.

Waves of sound swirl through the room, a combination of obscene catcalls and books slammed to the floor. Then I add my own voice to the cacophony, yelling for quiet. Finally I ask Koy, one of the few who studies, to come to the front of the class to give his poetry presentation.

The room is suddenly quiet as Koy stands rigidly in front of my desk, staring down at his notes. In a halting voice, he begins reading from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” There is some shifting in seats. Two girls begin putting on makeup.

Koy finishes reading. I ask him if he found any metaphors in the poem. He looks at me quizzically, as if uncertain that I really want him to proceed. Suddenly, Henry throws a paper airplane across the room. Anything I might have said to Koy about metaphors is forgotten in the commotion of dealing with Henry, who I decide must go to another room.

“Hey man, what did I do?” asks Henry, to calls of, “He didn’t do nothin’ ” and “Give him a chance, man.” Henry makes no move to leave the room. I say, “Go to Mr. Glade’s room or I’ll drop you off at the dean’s office.” Henry doesn’t like my tone. “I’ll drop you off, man,” he replies. Five more minutes of class time are devoted to Henry while I write up a referral to the dean, knowing that threatening a teacher will earn Henry at least one day of suspension.

Meanwhile, Koy sits dejected in his seat, ignored even on the day of his presentation. I decide to rebel against this injustice by asking him to stay a few minutes after class. Still Koy must wait, as I deal with several furious students who demand to know why they received D’s and F’s on their poetry presentations when they had read poems to the class. I explain that they had not given any thought to the particulars of the assignment (they were supposed to search for metaphors), had picked easy poems (some from Hallmark cards) and had shown no insights into the work. They storm off, shaking their heads in disgust.

I then ask Koy about his life. He tells me he arrived from Korea two years ago. His English vocabulary is small, but he is making slow and steady progress. I can see that somewhere in his early education he was taught how to be a student. It’s unlikely that happened here.

*

The next morning, Henry is not in class but I pay no attention to Koy or the other serious students because two boys are shouting profanities as they walk in. A few girls laugh. The boys begin shoving each other and several others join in. About 10 minutes of class time are used up in quieting everyone down.

I hand back a recent quiz, a very easy one, and it turns out that Rigo got his highest grade to date, a C, which looked good against the many F’s and D’s. “Hey, Mr. Lasken, and you thought I was stupid, man,” says Rigo. This is the last work I will see from Rigo before a month of distraction and truancy.

I begin to talk about poetry. I plan to read the class some Robert Frost. Sandra raises her hand. She says too loudly, “Hey, Mr. Lasken, you know poetry is really great when you’re high!” Much commotion ensues.

I ponder the futility of giving a serious response. I finally quiet the class enough to read the Frost poem, but my audience is distracted.

*

At nutrition I visit one of our counselors for background on my classes. She gives me her assessment of the many problem students at our school. “They are trapped in the system,” she says. “They know they cannot climb out of their knowledge deficit and they’ve stopped caring.” She might have added that these students expect to be passed on without question through every stage of life, as they have been passed on to ninth grade.

On my way back to my classroom, I stop by the dean’s office. The secretary is surrounded by surly teenagers sent by my colleagues. She assures me that if Henry threatens me again, he will be transferred to another high school. Of course, that school will send us its problems.

Our high school and the high schools around us are bubbling caldrons of teenage discontent. We are bailing water. In the hall I smell marijuana, and I am suddenly overcome with the sense that we are not really addressing what is going on in public school. The exit exam makes sense on its own terms: Students should be able to demonstrate that they’ve mastered required subject matter before graduating high school. But when we have to deny diplomas to tens of thousands of students, we’ll see the true problem: Our schools have been serving not only as educational institutions but as de facto holding facilities, teenage day-care. No one has had to learn for a very long time and one bill from Sacramento will not change this quickly.

What will we do, then, with the many young adults who are about to be excluded from the benefits of an easy high school diploma? Perhaps we could better promote public vocational schools as an alternative to high school. Many students might be motivated by the chance to learn skills with an immediate payoff.

The alternative is not attractive: thousands of unemployed young people with no hope. Of course, teachers will do their best to help kids learn and pass the new exams, but reform from above will not change the realities on the ground.

Students who are confirmed nonlearners will give up and drop out. We might as well start planning for it now, before it happens.