2 Educators Face Pitfalls of Too Much Success

Two weeks ago, Nancy Goldberg, an English teacher at Culver City High School, received a letter from the College Board, which administers standardized tests.

Goldberg and a colleague, Curt Mortenson, had been so good at preparing students for the college-level Advanced Placement tests that the board wanted her assistance. Would she be willing to train teachers around the country to do the same?

The letter should have provided a happy moment of recognition for one of Southern California’s longest-running teaching teams. Goldberg and Mortenson have been a fixture for three decades at Culver City High. Over the last 15 years, the twosome built the school’s Advanced Placement program in English into a powerhouse.

Too much of a powerhouse, perhaps.

A day before the College Board’s letter arrived, Goldberg received a phone message. It was from Culver City’s principal, Kavin Dotson. He said that she and Mortenson would no longer be teaching any AP classes. He explained later that the percentage of students passing the AP tests had declined.

How could an apparent national success look bleak to a local principal? The answer to that question is a story of the perils teachers face in trying to provide the highest-level courses for as many students as possible.

What Culver City’s principal failed to note was that the passing rate fell because Goldberg and Mortenson had been so successful at building that program. From a handful of students in the 1980s, Culver City’s AP English classes have grown to include nearly 200 students, 113 of whom took exams in AP English in May.

That is more students than take AP exams in all subjects at most American high schools, where AP is often reserved only for the elite.

“We had a good thing going, like Camelot,” Goldberg says. “It’s hard to understand why anyone would want to step in now, as we’re growing. It took a long time to get this far.”

Dotson has indicated that he is reconsidering his decision, but it seems certain the pair will no longer teach as a team.

However it turns out, Goldberg and Mortenson’s experience could foreshadow conflicts on other campuses, as more high school students--who like the extra grade points and college credits they can earn through AP classes--seek more AP offerings.

Goldberg, 64, started teaching AP in the early 1980s, after another teacher asked her to help with a combination English and history course. Only a handful of her students chose to take Advanced Placement tests.

After a few years, Goldberg began teaching courses devoted entirely to preparing students for AP exams in English language and literature. To help, she recruited Mortenson, 57, a Culver City High graduate who had returned to his alma mater to teach.

He was reluctant at first. “No one really wanted to teach AP,” he says. Many teachers don’t want the extra work that teaching a college-level course involves. Others shrink from the accountability that comes with the test results, which the College Board sends back to high schools in early July.

By the mid-1990s, Mortee and Goldie--as their students called them--had worked out a system. Goldberg taught an AP English course for 11th-graders who would take the language test. The two teachers team-taught the 12th-grade AP English course for the literature test takers, with Mortee handling Shakespeare and Goldie teaching more modern fare.

Both had their students write every day. They complemented each other well, says a student, who, in a reference to two famous basketball coaches, calls them the Pat Riley and Phil Jackson of English.

Mortenson, the Riley-esque taskmaster known for using the Socratic method of teaching on occasion, enforced strict rules. No more than four “to be” verbs on a page because writing should be active. No use of colloquialisms such as “like,” “you know” and “whatever.”

Goldberg seemed the kinder, gentler grandmother, with a hippie streak. She encouraged students to bring examples from their personal lives into class and would recommend outside books to her students. She also was the advisor for the campus literary magazine and for a time supervised an Amnesty International chapter.

“I hate to speak in class, but I opened up in English,” says Lauren Brody, a UC Riverside freshman who was Goldberg’s student. “If you’re from Culver City, Mortee and Goldie are English. They represent the English language.”

By 1996, the AP English program had become a clear success. About 60 students took one of the two tests that year, and their passing rate was around 70%, a little better than average.

Still, Mortenson and Goldberg weren’t content. They believed their classes didn’t enroll enough minority students and were unfairly limited to the high school’s top achievers.

They set out to expand AP, bringing in promising students without honors backgrounds who they hoped would benefit from a challenge. Goldberg also sought out other teachers to join the program, but no one in the English department expressed interest. She even suggested the addition of one teacher in a letter to the principal. He never responded, she says.

By last fall, Goldberg and Mortenson were handling six AP sections with nearly 200 students. This May, the number of Culver City High students taking AP exams in English was more than twice the number sitting for the tests in any other subject.

“At least two-thirds of the people who take English take it because of Goldie and Mortee,” senior Brendan Hamme says. “It’s not because we all love English.”

One casualty of the expansion in AP English was the passing rate; this year, only 44% of the students taking the college-level exams passed. That decline helped prompt his move, Principal Dotson said in an e-mail circulated to parents. In the same e-mail, he also wrote that he wanted to give other teachers a chance to handle AP.

Dotson did not respond to several interview requests. But the principal may have underestimated the depth of the community feeling for Goldberg and Mortenson. Within 24 hours of his phone call to Goldberg, rumors of Dotson’s decision spread through Culver City like advance buzz on a new Sony film.

At last week’s school board meeting, a room that usually seats 20 people held 70, mostly honor students and their families. An additional 30 protesters stood outside. In all, more than two dozen people spoke against the change. Two former students, in college back East, sent letters of protest. The only speaker supporting the switch was the principal’s secretary.

The board and officials of the 5,600-student Culver City school district appeared unmoved. “Assigning classroom teachers is a prerogative of the principal,” says Thomas Dase, assistant superintendent for educational services. “And I think as we take a look at the AP scores, we always desire that there be more students passing the tests.”

Since the outcry, Dotson appears to have relented somewhat. He has indicated that Goldberg and Mortenson may continue to teach some AP classes--but not as a team. That has not cooled the emotions of students, who say they will continue to lobby the board.

“This all seems up in the air,” Goldberg says. “I guess after all the good years, we were due for something like this.”