Garfield High Teachers Say They Can Deliver Again

Garfield High School became an overnight sensation more than a decade ago after Hollywood immortalized its best-known teacher, Jaime Escalante.

The 1987 movie “Stand and Deliver” told how that indomitable man turned chronic underachievers into calculus wizards, forever earning Garfield a place on the education map.

Now the campus in East Los Angeles is trying to reclaim a share of that brilliance. This time, Garfield’s teachers and administrators have put their jobs on the line to improve the academic record of their storied but struggling campus.

Garfield is one of nearly 900 California schools to volunteer for a new state program that gives low-performing campuses extra money and guidance in exchange for a pledge to raise test scores.

Schools that fail to meet growth targets or show significant progress over two years can be reorganized, taken over by outside agencies or closed, and their staff members can be reassigned.

Garfield teachers believe the solution rests not with replacements but with themselves. They are plowing $1.8 million in new funds from the state program, plus an equal amount from their own budget, into several key reading and math reforms over the next two years.

“Replacing the teachers is an empty threat,” says Tom Hutton, a onetime Garfield math teacher who runs the school’s library media center. “Nobody’s waiting for our jobs.”

The truth is, there are no ready replacements.

About 14% of California’s 294,000 teachers now lack full credentials, meaning they have not completed the necessary course work and training. The bulk of these instructors are found in the state’s urban schools--campuses like Garfield that are at the center of the state’s new school accountability system.

The shortage of qualified teachers is expected to only worsen as enrollments increase, teachers retire, and other professions continue to lure newcomers away with higher salaries.

No one--not even some of California’s top education officials--is quite sure where the new teachers and administrators would come from if the state made good on its threats.

“You don’t go to the Safeway and order yourself up great teachers,” said John Mockler, the former state education secretary who is executive director of the California Board of Education. “Great teachers are really hard to find. So are great principals.”

Even if school districts could replace the teachers, that strategy alone may be a losing proposition unless other assistance is provided.

Teachers and other staff members at schools like Garfield encounter myriad challenges that lie beyond their control. Among these are crowded classrooms, staff turnover, year-round calendars that slice weeks off the school year and parents who have little formal education of their own.

“We need to change the conditions in these schools so that teachers actually thrive,” says Margaret Gaston, co-director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz.

Two-thirds of Garfield’s parents never finished high school. More than one-third of the students are still learning English. Nearly all of them qualify for federally subsidized lunches.

These are important facts for one reason: Poverty and parents’ educational achievement are viewed as the best predictors of academic performance.

Garfield is a case in point. The school’s already low Stanford 9 test scores dropped last year from the year before. As a result, the school’s state ranking on a scale of 1 to 10 dropped from 2 to 1, placing it among the poorest-performing schools in California.

The school’s reforms will focus on the meat and potatoes of education: reading, writing and math.

Garfield will redouble its efforts to align instruction with the state’s demanding new academic standards. Senior teachers will serve as English and math coaches for their colleagues.

After-school and weekend tutoring will be provided with an eye toward targeting those still learning English. Students will be tested regularly to gauge progress. Workshops will be offered to teach parents about their important role in their children’s education.

If Escalante could perform miracles more than a decade ago, some at the school wonder, why can’t the current teachers do the same?

“We’re really marching toward loftier ideals,” said Principal Norma Danyo, a Garfield graduate. “There’s a yearning to return to that point. There’s every reason to pull together and do our best.”

Some teachers are optimistic.

“It’s possible to take kids from this school and [reach] for the sky,” said John Bennett, who has taught at Garfield since 1968 and coaches the school’s successful academic decathlon team.

Others are skeptical, having watched too many reform efforts come and go without results.

“We’ve been given program after program for years,” said English teacher Jeff Combe. “Teachers know what works in the classroom.”

Garfield is a proud school. Dozens of its alumni, including Danyo, have returned to teach at the school. The modest but neat neighborhoods around the campus are home to successive generations of the same families.

Escalante is gone, having left years ago for Northern California. But his spirit remains a powerful force on a campus where teachers are vowing, once again, to believe in themselves and their students.

“We wouldn’t do this unless we knew there was a an excellent chance for success,” said Carol Silva, a 27-year Garfield veteran who will be a math coach.

“We haven’t been happy with the way things have been going, but we haven’t had the wherewithal to do anything about it. Now we can get a good, solid push.”