Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for December 24, 2006 ALTERNATIVE (TO) SCHOOL

Okay...spend your SIP days (and nights) "aligning the curriculum to state standards"; make sure that your classroom assessment measures student attainment of those standards; reteach your butt off; HOLD THOSE STUDENTS ACCOUNTABLE; devise "learning strategies" and "motivational methods" to reach the hardest to reach - to inspire a love of learning in the most barren student's soul. And...watch him/her do a packet of materials over the weekend and get credit for your course!

And guess what school gets restructured and guess whose butt gets fired when Johnny flunks the state test, but graduates from high school after receiving credit for your class from "Diplomas R Us"...and lives happily (ignorant) ever after!

Is this where I say..."Bah, Humbug!"

From the Salt Lake Tribune...

Students say getting credits through a private learning center is much better than going to class

By Julia Lyon
The Salt Lake Tribune

By the time Spencer Taiti graduates from Woods Cross High School, he will have spent hours of school time doing everything but learning. An inveterate class-skipper, the junior guesses he has failed or will fail as many as 10 classes, often because he didn't bother to show up.

But he will graduate, the teen says. If he has his way, Taiti will make up all those failed classes by completing packets provided by private companies such as Layton's Northridge Learning Center. The course packet his friend Meleana Otukolo completed in about five hours earned her the credit she should have gotten attending nine weeks of class for about 90 minutes every other day. At Northridge, that "quarter" credit costs $45.

"I want to get done with school the easiest way possible," he says.

At a time of increasing academic standards in Utah, teachers report an epidemic of students making up classes they couldn't bother to attend by buying course packets or going to workshops offered by private educators. Students say cheating is simple and happens frequently. It's easy to copy a buddy's packet, and not all students have to take a final test, they say.

While teachers don't criticize every program, they consider a handful to be nothing more than credit factories that demean the value of teachers' work in the classroom and which leave students without any skills.

"All they're doing is selling diplomas," says Dan McGuire, a math and physics teacher at West High School in Salt Lake City.

The problem is compounded by a new Utah law that has forced districts to abandon policies that prevented students from collecting credit from questionable institutions. Now, no matter how many concerns a high school has about the quality of a program, school officials must, by law, accept credit from any program accredited or approved by the state or the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools. The law does not limit how many credits a student can make up outside school, leaving students such as Taiti essentially free to skip class with abandon.

Private providers defend their systems. Students seem to prefer their programs over those that districts offer after school to make up credit, which can take more time and are "harder." The teens like that they have many ways to make up their failures. They enjoy working at their own pace and find that some packets take weeks to complete.

"I think I learn a lot from my packets," says Otukolo, a West High student.

When Kenneth Grover was assistant principal at West High, he saw students two classes short of credits needed for graduation make them up "miraculously" over a weekend. In 2004-05, his last year at West, he estimated students spent more than $60,000 paying for make-up credit programs. Nearly 300 quarter credits, the equivalent of one term, were completed by West High students through Northridge in 2005-06, West records show.

"I've seen students come up with eight, nine [quarter] credits of high school work in three weeks," he says.

Some West teachers are particularly incensed over the looseness of the private provider credit system, in which they see students getting credit for core classes - the fundamentals of a Utah diploma - despite not going to class. They argue that counselors should not encourage students to make up credit at institutions they perceive as lacking in integrity. Because all credits are treated equally, credits from such institutions can affect class ranking, honor roll status and athletic eligibility.

"If we all - parents, teachers, kids, counselors and administrators - had a common goal, which would be to educate a child, we'd be in good shape," says Diana Taggart, a West High calculus teacher. "But unfortunately, they're in a tug of war."

Behind the law

When Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, sponsored the law affecting make-up credit, he was reacting to parents concerned that some public schools weren't accepting credits transferred from accredited private schools.

"A student shouldn't have to take algebra twice because somebody in public school thinks they're the only people who can decide if a credit is worthy," he said.

In his mind, accreditation standards used by the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools ensure equity. Buttars' law specifies that Northwest or the Utah Board of Education must have approved or accredited a private provider.

Accreditation in Utah does ensure that a school's program complies with the state's core education requirements, according to David Steadman, Northwest's executive director. He says problems Utah teachers may see in certain programs may be a reality in every school. Teachers and parents with concerns about private providers can direct them to the school or the state.

"How often in a public school do kids cheat, do kids download stuff off the Internet?" he asked. "It's the same scenario - it's possible in these supplemental centers or public schools or any school; that can happen."

Dixie Evans, who owns Northridge and taught in public schools for 30 years, agrees students get the best education from teachers in the classroom. But because that's not always possible, she offers another option to students who are at-risk, on probation, learning-disabled and others. When students complete Northridge packets, they are told they are doing the state's minimum core requirements.

To prevent cheating, she requires students' work to be in their own handwriting. When the school catches a packet completed by another student, the student must write a letter of apology and redo the work. In her own analysis of the 2,204 packets completed between January 2002 and January 2005, the minimum amount of time it took between picking up, completing and returning a packet was three days. The average was about 46 days.

But it's not just teachers who have had questions about the program. Northridge remains accredited by Northwest, but a state committee had recommended the school lose that status. The school's appeal was upheld this fall and the committee's procedures were criticized, according to a Sept. 15 letter from Northwest's executive director.

Yet the letter noted Northridge may still be in violation of certain accreditation standards. Concerns included "certification and use of administrators and instructors" and "validation of student achievement for course work," according to the letter. An accreditation team will visit the school in January to determine its status. Evans said the school can show how it has met all the requirements of accreditation. Programs like hers fill a need, she says.

"What about students who aren't successful in a classroom situation? What do you do with those?" she asks. "Public education is mandatory in our country. We have to find some way to help these people succeed."

A diploma's value

Districts try to establish rigorous standards for students in their own after-school make-up credit courses, often requiring students to show up for a certain number of hours of tutoring and checking in on students' work. In the Salt Lake district, most of the packets students complete have been developed by district teachers or approved by them. One thing private and public school programs sometimes share is a similar cost.

And not everyone in public schools dismisses the value of private providers.

"If a kid can get out with a diploma, the rest of their life is better for them," said Orin Johanson, a West counselor. "If we have to send them to some less-than-appropriate make-up [program], I, for one, think it's OK if a kid is dealing with certain circumstances."

He points to major life crises and changes such as pregnancy, death and divorce. Some kids work and are unable to attend an after-school make-up credit option.

Though he doesn't want to see the system abused, Johanson remains practical.

"Until we as a school system set up a larger variety of school-sponsored options, then we should be open, in the best interest of kids, to other options to help kids get diplomas," the counselor said.

Catching up

When Mike Daniels was a West High senior in 2005, he missed the deadline for the school's make-up credit program and turned to Woodland Hills School in Murray for help. The school offered a Saturday workshop where he could spend the day and make good on the quarter credit of English he had flunked.

"Any type of serious academic thought was pretty much undermined by the fact that they pretty much read you the answers to the questions," he recalls.

Since Daniels' time, Woodland Hills has worked with districts to expand its requirements and makes students attend two to three Saturdays working on the course. Every student takes an exit exam. Curriculum is developed for each class, which has a separate instructor. Small classes ensure accountability. To earn a quarter credit costs $200.

"One of our biggest concerns was not providing an opportunity for kids or parents to manipulate the system," school director Dennis Liddell says. "Sometimes what would happen is a student would fail the class and think, 'I'll go over to Woodland Hills and make it up there.' In some sense, that was rendering the schools in a helpless position."

Now studying biochemistry at the University of Utah, Daniels says, looking back, he would rather have gotten a strong grade point average than catch up with a make-up credit course.

"You want to have something better to put forward than, 'Hey, I met the minimum requirements of public edu- cation.' ''