Anaheim Program Helps Held-Back Kids Get on Track

They didn’t want to do the work. They felt too embarrassed to ask for help. Or they just didn’t believe the warnings. So 560 Anaheim eighth-graders were held back last fall.

Banning social promotion a year before most of the state, Anaheim Union High School District is requiring students at eight junior high schools to earn a cumulative 2.0--or C average--or be held back a year.

Juan Torres, 15, who is repeating eighth grade at Ball Junior High, now gets honor roll-worthy A’s and B’s. He used to wince at the thought of calculating percentages. Rather than confess his struggles to teachers, he skipped his homework, tumbling even further behind.

“I wouldn’t ask for help, and the work was too hard for me, so I wouldn’t turn it in,” Juan said. This year, “when I ask [teachers] for help, they give it to me. I have a math teacher who explains everything really well.” Even percentages.

About 125 students are enrolled in Ball’s 2.0 Program, where classes are small--25 or fewer pupils to a teacher. Half a dozen teachers who volunteered for the program meet almost daily to discuss progress.

The class offerings address the students’ biggest weakness: reading. Last fall, the average eighth-grader read at a third- or fourth-grade level, teacher Jerry Underwood said. While the exact degree of their improvement won’t be known until end-of-the-year reading test results come in, they now are taking reading, math, history, science and English as core subjects. The only electives are physical education and a study-skills class.

Of the students held back at Ball, about 85 have brought their grades up enough to enter high school. A few others are on the brink of retention. But about 30 who won’t make it will be enrolled in Vista, an alternative high school the district is launching. If their grades improve there, they can move on to a comprehensive high school.

Once they realized school officials weren’t kidding and held them back, students James Harris and Manuel Plascencia, both 15, said they hit the books. The boys and their parents recently attended an honors potluck--an event that marked the first academic success for some of the students.

James said he vowed to bring his grades up to perfection, straight A’s. He did it--a fact that brings tears to his mother’s eyes. Manuel, who is studying more instead of flirting with girls, cracked the honor roll for the first time.

Underwood said the kids initially didn’t believe they would be held back. Many had a chance to bring their grades up in summer school but didn’t bother to show. As the school year approached, some avoided the retention policy by transferring to other districts.

For students who were held back, Underwood said the key has been identifying their weaknesses, targeting those, and teaching them how to succeed.

“The philosophy of the program is giving them a clean, fresh start this year,” Underwood said. “Whatever happened last year, I don’t care. They sort of took to that. . . . We told them this was not a punishment, but an opportunity, and they clung to that.”

Anaheim is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into extra space for retention programs, more intensive help and expanded summer school offerings. A variety of retention programs are being tried at the district’s eight junior highs.

Doug Grove, who teaches computer applications at the district’s Oxford Academy, is studying the effects of retention programs at three of the schools for his master’s degree thesis. His findings will be given to the district to help shape next year’s offerings for held-back students.

At those schools, three main methods have been tried. One has students repeating the same course work as the previous year, but with different teachers. Another has students in a special program where three teachers share the instruction load and teach subjects in longer blocks. A third has smaller class sizes and one teacher covering every subject, as in elementary school.

So far, the students in the elementary-like model have earned the highest marks, followed by those who learn from three team teachers. The least success has been achieved by students getting the same lessons from different teachers.

Groves said that about 50 of the 130 students he is following may wind up at Vista. The rest are off to their neighborhood high school.

“Retention is working for a majority of these students,” he said. “And that’s a positive thing, a very positive thing.”