Contrasting Students: Success and Failure at the Same Time

Part of what draws me so keenly to the classroom, what continues to fire my admiration and respect for teenagers, is their utter lack of ingrained cynicism.

Teens do, however, make for harsh skeptics. Try to buffalo young adults and their internal truth filters quickly kick in: Is the speaker voicing the truth, or is something else buried in heaps of euphemism and jargon, the “double-speak” that George Orwell warned against?

Kids know.

Conversely, many of the seasoned teachers I work with wear cynicism like soft, invisible shoes--shoes that cozen us, protect us without any overt effort. Some of us pull our cynicism on every day, for without this protective skin, the harsh realities that litter our paths at school would leave us trailing optimism in dribbling rivulets.

Those of us who fervently believe that schools have the capacity to educate far beyond content and standards worry that education doled out in measurable bits overlooks a singular possibility for teaching humanity and compassion.

For us, the following two stories enrage our sensibilities. And perhaps more importantly, in an age where teacher “accountability” and student “performance” litter our dialogue, these examples illustrate the hypocritical nature of an educational system that treats both teachers and students with so little respect.

A little over four years ago, a young man from Korea enrolled at my school. From the other side of the Earth, his family sent him to California for the opportunity to learn and grow in a foreign land. He did not speak English then, but this did not prevent him from learning the language of this country, compiling a 3.32 grade-point average, placing in the top third of his class of 550, and passing every one of his classes. His faithful attendance, although not perfect, contributed to his good grades.

Another student from this community, one who spoke English as her native language and who had every advantage that nearby family and cultural familiarity could provide, managed a grade-point average of 2.06, placed in the bottom 10th of this same class, and did not pass all of her classes on first try. In two classes during her senior year, she logged nearly a 25% absence rate.

Together, these two students show disparate degrees of performance in school and commitment to learning. Only one graduated with the class of 2000; both of these students had their lives irrevocably altered through educational hypocrisy.

The student who attended spottily and barely managed passing grades failed math during her final semester. With less than five days to graduation, our school provided her with the PASS (Portable Assisted Student Study) program. In two days, she made up one and a half semesters of work and marched up to collect her diploma.

For all his diligence, the Korean student was not so fortunate. He remained unable to pass a writing test designed to measure a person’s ability to formulate an explanatory paragraph. During his four years, he repeatedly failed to pass this test, and he had failed again during the last week of the school year. Members of our faculty attempted to give and score additional attempts at this exam; when their efforts were prevented, this young man saw his four years of hard work go for naught.

In both cases, the school’s efforts followed district policies. And herein lie the issues at hand: Some of the ways in which we assess students, and the ways in which our communities wish to have us held accountable, make no sense in the context of these two lives and perhaps many others.

The PASS program was devised for migrant students in the ninth and 10th grades who did not attend school on a regular basis, and could use “packets of work” under the supervision of teachers to help them attain a passing grade. Our district purchased these materials and applied them as designed and otherwise--using them as a safety net for children of any background and age who had failed their semester courses.

A single writing sample as a method of assessment asks us to believe that real world writing exists in just one form: Answer a specific question in a very specific way, without research, reference books or any other kind of assistance.

As a society, do we want our understanding of a student’s abilities and worthiness to graduate linked to this kind of artificial writing, or will we find ways to encourage and examine success growing from hard work and intellectual engagement?

*

At our school, as in many others, we post our Expected Schoolwide Learning Results in every classroom. These act as educational mission statements. At present, our staff is laboring to align our instruction to the ESLRs and the state curriculum guidelines--a worthy and useful task. Unfortunately, this work has brought us face to face with the hypocrisy that threatens to infect our students: ESLR No. 3 admonishes one and all to “think critically, question intelligently, solve problems and set realistic goals.”

The boy who flew to America four years ago, so full of hope and expectation, telephoned his parents with the news that a single test would keep him from graduating with his peers. Later in the summer he flew home, diploma in hand, after passing the exam with a little more coaching.

What had he learned about America and its educational system? He had learned that students could “D” their way through every assignment for four years and still graduate, yet he would sit out graduation because four years of good work did not outweigh a five-sentence paragraph written under artificial circumstances.

Perhaps he learned that he could have approached his classes in a slovenly way, skipped school, failed to turn in major assignments, made up his failed classes at a junior college, enrolled in special “opportunity” courses, cheated, lied and faked his way through just enough to get by and, as long as he made sure to write a five-sentence paragraph correctly, he could hold an authentic American high school diploma. He knew of these options, and chose others.

The girl who walked the line with her peers, who shook the hand of a school official and received her diploma on the football field amid cheers and ceremony, what had she learned about our educational system?

She learned that no matter how little she tried, how poorly she succeeded, our school system would continue to provide her with more options up until the final day.

Our faculty? Some of us came away shocked. Others nodded their heads in the solemn recognition of the knowing. Where the state of California and our community expected and deserved consistency and a high set of standards, we had betrayed them. And now, while we labor to align our curriculum with state standards and prepare for our school’s state accreditation, I silently note more soft shoes treading our halls, and idealism leaking in greater freshets than ever before.