Seeking a ‘Fresh Start’

Accountability has become a buzzword in education, with parents and school boards seeking to assign responsibility for teaching students to read and write, add and subtract.

Done properly, setting standards and holding teachers and administrators to them are good ideas. Students and those who oversee their education should be told the norms and the rewards or demerits for meeting them or falling short.

The principals of two elementary schools in Santa Ana have been reassigned in recent months after the schools did poorly in tests. That could be a harbinger. State officials say principals and teachers across California could be shifted to new assignments if students do poorly in uniform statewide tests and fail to improve. In some instances, the state has warned it could take over a school.

It is important to give schools at the low end of the scale time to improve. It also is important to provide extra help and show teachers and principals what methods have worked at similar schools.

The superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District, Al Mijares, said the principals at Hoover and Wilson schools were transferred based on the standing of the schools over a three-year period. Both ranked at or near the bottom of schools in the district.

Mijares said it was felt the schools needed a “fresh start” and that new principals would provide that.

The principals said they were treated unfairly and that the process used to review their schools was flawed. They said staffs were not given enough time to prepare for on-site evaluations. However, it is to the Santa Ana district’s credit that it began testing at the schools several years before the start of the uniform statewide tests known as the Stanford 9, which examine reading, math and language ability. Since 1998, when Stanford 9 testing began, the district has used the scores as a measuring stick and warned of the possibility of requiring changes at schools that failed to improve.

Teachers and administrators at a number of Santa Ana schools say the way to improve performance is to emphasize development of staff and teachers and ensure that they in turn emphasize the basics: reading and math.

There always is the danger of schools “teaching to the test,” ensuring that their classes are able to do well on the Stanford 9 even if they do not have a command of the basics. But principals say in those cases the results are likely to change dramatically from year to year rather than showing incremental improvement.

It also is clear that parental involvement helps students improve. When standards set in the classroom are reinforced at home, scores improve. Children who see that their parents value education, consult regularly with teachers and provide books for reading at home can move ahead.

Businesses also can assist schools by providing funds, equipment or employees willing to take the time to tutor students or read to them. That emphasizes the importance the wider community places on education.

Many Santa Ana schools face problems more severe than those in other districts. Nearly four out of five students at Hoover are learning English; and the school, built for 600 students, has 1,250.

An encouraging development in recent years has been the willingness of residents to pass bonds to build new schools and fix up old ones. In those instances, too, accountability is important, so that residents who are paying higher taxes because of the bond passage can see that the money is being spent effectively.

Remaining teachers and staff at the two Santa Ana schools have the opportunity to take advantage of the “fresh start” sought by Mijares. The district for its part has to see to it that the schools have the tools they need to improve student performance.