Schools’ Use of Students as Clerks Draws Criticism

Matthew Rodriguez followed a script when he answered the main office telephone at his Los Angeles school. “Good afternoon. Thank you for calling Franklin High School. Student speaking.” The 14-year-old freshman also filed papers and ran errands for administrators during a daily class period.

And for that work, he received academic credit.

His mother couldn’t believe it at first, especially because she had wanted him to take a college prep course in Spanish instead. He told her he wound up in the student clerk position because there was no room in the language class.

“I take summons notes to classes, bring books to classes or help parents find classes,” Matthew explained after his mother picked him up after school recently.

“So, you’re like a tour guide?” Rosalinda Rodriguez asked. “That’s kind of wasting his time. What are they learning?”

Educators around the country are asking similar questions.

Hundreds of thousands of other middle and high school students nationwide earn academic credit for working as clerks in their schools’ attendance, counseling and main offices, as well as in libraries and classrooms. They deliver mail, run errands, sharpen pencils for standardized tests and even grade some quizzes.

In addition to class credits, student aides receive needed lessons in the work ethic and breaks from the academic grind. Problems occasionally pop up, with some student workers tampering with transcripts, trading confidential information or nabbing office supplies. Still, the tradition has continued for decades--embraced, winked at or just tolerated. The free labor eases drudgery for adult staffers and saves schools lots of money.

But as the nation’s schools are pressed to boost standardized test scores and send more graduates to college, academic experts increasingly say students should not be given academic credit for clerical work. And some districts, including Los Angeles, are starting to put strict limits on how many credits a student can earn that way.

“It’s a kind of dirty little secret in education that a lot of students have service and [teacher’s assistant] classes, instead of taking academic classes,” said Phyllis Hart, director for the Achievement Council of California, a nonprofit education organization based in Los Angeles. “In an era of standards-based reform in this country, we cannot afford for students--who are far behind in their academics--to spend learning time assisting adults.”

Many who enroll as aides do so as seniors, after they have completed college preparatory course work, and such classes do not hurt their chances of being accepted at universities. But others enroll as freshmen or sophomores, often because there is not enough space in other classes or they simply want to earn easy credit. Many are graded on such factors as attendance, behavior, work and attitude.

On a recent afternoon at Parkman Middle School in Woodland Hills, eighth-grader Diego Aguilar filed envelopes in a teacher’s box. Another student assistant munched on pretzels and answered a phone: “Parkman Middle School, student speaking.”

Aguilar, 14, said the service period is the most laid-back period of his school day.

“It’s better than any other class,” he said. “It’s an easy A on the report card.”

Schools in Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City and Tampa, Fla., are among those offering academic credit to student workers. Few systems, however, compare with the 736,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District when it comes to the number of aides per school.

Last fall, 33,000 middle and high school students in Los Angeles Unified were enrolled as student assistants, according to Bud Jacobs, director of high school programs for the district. An average of 180 students per middle school and 350 students per high school worked in those campus positions last semester, he said.

“It does the school good and it does the kid good,” he said. “It sometimes lightens the load academically, takes some of the pressure off. But it really is designed to give students the opportunity to work with adults.”

However, Los Angeles Unified is cracking down on campuses that, in some cases, allowed students to take as many as four semesters worth of clerking. Other requirements for graduation are increasing, and students will not be allowed to claim credit for more than two semesters of office work, starting this summer, according to Merl Price, deputy superintendent for instruction.

John Muir High in Pasadena allows four semesters of service credit. Cindy Gamble, a college-bound senior there, is taking five academic courses this semester in addition to working as an office assistant. She said she enjoys answering phones and running photocopiers, and the chance to do homework when the pace is slow. But Gamble, 18, who is in her second semester of clerking, says not everyone should sign up for it.

Many freshmen and sophomores are aides “because they don’t want to be in a regular academic class,” she said. “There should be restrictions.... I say go ahead and take your core courses first instead of wasting your time.”

Allowing students to earn credits as gofers is not wise, especially when the United States lags behind other countries in reading, writing and math skills, said Michael Cohen, a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute who wrote a report on transforming American high schools.

Because California requires all high school students to pass a new exit exam, beginning with the class of 2004, students need all the classroom time they can get, he said.

“Fifty years ago, you could get a good job and earn a decent living because demands for skills were relatively low. Not anymore. Everyone needs a higher level of education,” Cohen said.

“Why on Earth do they give students academic credit for that? Those kids are being robbed of an education. If they need student assistants to do filing, they should pay them.”

Objections arise from labor unions too.

“You end up with student workers doing things that should be done by adult staff,” said Connie Moreno, a labor relations representative for the California School Employees Assn.

Moreno said the union has brought up the issue with Los Angeles Unified, for example, arguing that students should not be allowed to work with confidential information or be used to fill gaps in adult staff.

In contrast, Reba Page, a professor of education at UC Riverside who studies curriculum issues for the American Educational Research Assn., said student aides can benefit from the experience.

“It is sometimes the case that the jobs are given to students who aren’t very successful academically in school,” she said. “They may not be going to college, but could very well end up as secretaries or clerks.”

She said she understands why some educators want to end academic credit for clerking, but she argued that “schools are not just academic institutions. They’re supposed to help students become good citizens and help students be able to do good work when they grow up.”

Many students perform their clerical tasks conscientiously--and sometimes save the day.

At John Muir in Pasadena recently, a bilingual student aide helped a distraught Spanish-speaking parent complete complicated financial aid paperwork when the parent was close to missing the application deadline.

In an English class at Taft High School in Woodland Hills on a recent Friday afternoon, a student assistant graded quizzes by matching vocabulary words with definitions, allowing the teacher more time to review the complex language of “Romeo and Juliet” with her pupils.

But trouble does arise.

For example, at Marina del Rey Middle School on Los Angeles’ Westside, two student workers in the dean’s office were suspended last month after they stole a pad of hall pass slips from the dean’s desk. They intended to forge staff members’ signatures and give them to friends, the dean said.

At Berkeley High in Northern California two years ago, 750 seniors’ diplomas were temporarily withheld after 20 students were suspended for paying a student aide to change grades in the computer system, according to Guillermo Barcenas, a counselor there.

Most seniors eventually did receive their diplomas, but the school has since tightened access to records and office computers.

Beverly Escoe, a secretary at Centennial High in Compton, said the school had problems with assistants calling their friends--some even making long-distance calls--until the school ended its long-distance service in the offices.

Other student aides say they are the first to hear gossip.

Working in the dean’s office at George Washington Preparatory High School in South-Central Los Angeles, Amir Hasan, 17, knows which student couple were caught kissing in the hallway, which girl got sent to the dean’s office because she fell asleep in class, and which faculty members don’t like each other, he said.

Many schools say they run the classes with high standards.

For example, at Seattle’s Roosevelt High, head counselor Wendy Krakauer said student aides are “subject to the same attendance requirement as other students, how well they do the job, what kind of self-responsibility and self-initiative they show.”

Joyce Jones, assistant principal of counseling at Franklin in Los Angeles, stressed that there are benefits for both the school and student aides, even if some youngsters are enrolled as a way to fill their schedules.

“We want to give all of our students as much of an academically challenging schedule as possible, so we don’t choose service as our first choice,” she said. “But we do want to give students an opportunity to give back to the school.”

Hart, head of the Achievement Council and a former counselor and teacher in Los Angeles Unified for 18 years, disagrees. Many administrators, she said, recently have realized they need to cut back on student aides because the stakes in education are higher now.

“The system needs to be based on what is good for kids,” she said, “not on what is good for adults.”