My School Deserves Better-And So Do I
Better teachers, more books and smaller classes would help us learn more
By Gohar Galyan, 17, Marshall HS
Published November-December, 1998
In the beginning of the semester, my Spanish 3 class had 53 students.
About 10 had no chairs so they sat on the window sills. Another five
stood, leaning against the wall. I thought about writing about it for my
school paper so I went to talk with the head counselor. He said that
since it was an advanced class, he expected many students to drop it.
Where was the support and encouragement? They should be telling us, "You
can do it!"
It's upsetting to look around and see all the problems at my school. My
psychology book is from 1986; I waited two months for a calculus book;
when my Spanish teacher was out for three weeks, we had three different
subs, none of whom progressed a page in the book; the copy machine in
the office often breaks down, making it hard for teachers to make
copies. If you are wondering why I don't change schools, it is because I
love Marshall. The problems facing my school are not unique to my
school. They occur throughout the district.
My teachers too are aware of the problems. The teacher for whom I have
the greatest respect told my dad at back-to-school night that if he had
teenagers, he would work three jobs to send them to a private school.
The same teacher, who has taught for more than 40 years and has taught
in other countries and states, always alludes to the administrators'
indifference. He says how the "people downstairs" don't care about what
is happening in the classrooms, and that is why they left the classrooms
to begin with. He says that when you enter their offices, it's like
walking into a little palace.
Like my teacher, I was under the impression that the district didn't
really care about what happened to us "little people" who are stuffed in
a room with 40 others without air conditioning.
Then I went to see Mr. Bob Collins, the head of the high school
division at his district office downtown. The lobby of the office was
crowded with little cubicles. There seemed to be a lot of commotion: it
was eight in the morning and the phones were ringing off the hook as
school administrators tried to figure out how to deal with the new
bilingual education requirements. When I met Mr. Collins, it seemed like
he had already done a full day's work. He looked like he had just
finished yelling at somebody on the phone and my appointment was one
more thing he had to deal with.
When I told him that many of the students and teachers think that the
district doesn't care, he looked shocked and angry.
"Why would they have that perception?"
Well, I said, we have dirty bathrooms, old books and teachers who can't
teach.
"Let me see your textbooks."
I pulled my 12-year-old psychology book out of my backpack. It looks
like someone had dropped it in a puddle on their way to school. The
pages are wavy with water damage, stained, stuck together and marked by
many previous students.
Mr. Collins flipped through it. "I would tell your teacher to get you a
new book."
I later asked my teacher why we couldn't get new books, but he said he
wasn't sure he was going to teach AP Psych. next year, so it might be a
waste of money, and besides, the school didn't have money for new books.
But that's not what Mr. Collins said. He said, "The district provided
Marshall High over $100,000 to purchase new texts... So when you say you
don't have new books, I suggest you see your principal."
When I mentioned it to my principal, he said, "There is money for new
books, and you should talk to your teacher again." The principal said he
would try to get me a new book by next semester.
Mr. Collins stressed that good teaching is essential to students'
success-and admitted that some teachers cannot teach well. "It is fair
to say that in any high school there are some outstanding teachers and
some that need significant help."
He noted that teaching doesn't attract highly qualified candidates. To
emphasize his point, he asked me what I want to do when I "grew up." I
said I wanted to go into law. He said a beginning lawyer makes $65,000
to $75,000 a year, about twice as much as most teachers. Think about it:
why would someone who could earn a lot more money and get a lot more
respect go into teaching? I know I wouldn't.
"The issue is how much do we value teachers and teaching? Do we value
the profession enough to compensate it?" asked Mr. Collins.
That wasn't the only big question that arose as I researched the
problems with our schools. How do we know that teachers are doing their
job? How much money is enough? Who decides how the money is spent? And
if student test scores are low, whose fault is it? I talked to two
school board members, my principal, one of my teachers and Mr. Collins
and at the end one thing became clear: everyone is pointing fingers and
no one seems to want to take responsibility. The teachers and
administrators say the students are responsible for getting a good
education. The administrators and students say some of the teachers
aren't doing a good job. The teachers and students don't think the
administrators care. Everyone thinks that the system is falling apart.
Amidst all this clamor one thing seems to get lost: a good public
education.
Improving the quality of teaching
Firing bad teachers is useless, according to school board member David
Tokofsky, who used to teach at Marshall. When the district fires a
teacher, the district is forced to lower its standards to in order to
find a replacement.
The lack of teachers can be explained by today's job market. Most of
today's brightest teens are not going to become tomorrow's teachers.
Instead they will choose to go into a field where the paychecks can keep
up with the rate of inflation.
Those who do teach often use the profession as a step job and soon move
on to a "real" career. Because of the urgent need for teachers, hiring
standards are low. On May 19, the Los Angeles Times commented "that
becoming a teacher in California is nearly as easy as getting a job at
McDonald's." All an applicant needs to apply for a job as a teacher in
the district is a bachelor's degree and a passing score on the C-BEST
Test. Candidates are trained while they work on "emergency credentials."
In fact, 10 to 20 percent of the district's teachers teach on emergency
credentials, Tokofsky said. He added that 65 percent of the district's
math classes are being taught by someone who didn't major in math in
college.
There are many highly qualified teachers who have other opportunities,
but choose to teach. They make a difference but (unfortunately) they
are overshadowed by those who use the profession as a step job and
become teachers because they can.
What do low test scores mean?
Half of the students who enter the Cal State system have to take
remedial classes in English and math. California is in the 32nd
percentile when it comes to the Stanford 9 tests. To me, these numbers
demonstrate that we are not learning as much as we should.
But everyone I talked to had a different response.
School Board President Victoria Castro said that scoring below the
national average does not mean that we are doing poorly. Stanford 9
compares how the students in California do in contrast to the students
in the other 49 states. Since the test scores are curved, someone always
has to be in the bottom.
When I told Board Member David Tokofsky about this, he bluntly replied
that he didn't know what she was talking about. Mr. Tokofsky thinks that
scores on standardized tests should be used to measure a teacher's
performance.
Mr. Collins said, "I don't put the quality of teaching as being
determined by a standardized test given to a student the first year
he/she enters university. It's important, it concerns me but I'm far
more interested in other factors that a student learns in the
classroom."
Mr. Collins argued that standardized tests don't always measure a
student's knowledge in the order that the student studied it. For
example, students learn U.S. History in the eighth and the tenth grades
but the Stanford 9 tests the students on U.S. History in the ninth
grade. He also said that the tests are not fair to "urban
populations"-minorities and those from low-income groups.
My principal Tom Abraham said students score low on the tests because
they have bad test-taking skills and they're not being prepared
specifically for those tests. (But if the Cal State entrance exam
measures basic skills in math and English, why do we need to prepare for
them? Basic math and English skills as well as test-taking skills are
things that we should have studied and practiced throughout elementary,
middle and high school.)
My history teacher Bob Grakal said kids are to blame for their low
scores. Look at your class, he told me. Half of you don't read the book
on the night that it's assigned, so we can't have a discussion. You wait
until the night before the test. He added that kids are distracted from
their school work by sports, jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends and after
school activities.
As I think about all that's been said about this, it doesn't add up. No
one wants to be held accountable. They're afraid of being blamed for
students' failures. I can see that it's unjust to blame the teachers
alone for low scores. I can see that there are a variety of factors
which are responsible for the disappointing scores, and a student's
performance and participation in class without a doubt plays a big role
on the student's success in college as well as on standardized tests.
But there isn't much a student can do when he is placed in a class with
40 of his peers; neither is there a lot that a teacher can do when the
kids start falling through the cracks.
We're tired of the government's empty promises
Politicians often promise educational reform to win their elections.
This year the candidates for governor were all talking about how to make
the school system accountable-and they all know exactly how to do it.
But once they're in office, politicians' "perfect-on-paper" ideas
evaporate. Four years ago, when Pete Wilson was campaigning for
governor, he promised computers in the classrooms, drug and
violence-free schools, removing red tape so that parents and teachers
have more control, and getting parents more involved in schools.
"Improving our schools will take fundamental change," he wrote in a Los
Angeles Times column in 1994. But as a middle school and now a high
school student, I haven't seen these changes.
It's no wonder that so many of us think that reform is a bunch of hot
air. I tried to interview a math teacher at Marshall for this article.
He refused. I followed him down the hall for half an hour after school
but he wouldn't change his mind. He said, What's the use? There is
always talk of change, but nothing happens.
Governor Wilson was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in August telling
elementary students, "You're every bit as bright as those kids growing
up in foreign lands. We want you to have the maximum opportunity."
During one of the meetings at LA Youth, we laughed and someone said that
he sounds like a coach giving a pep talk to a team that has lost for the
12th year.
Sugarcoated answers
During the interviews, I felt that many of the answers I received to my
questions were covering up the truth. When I asked Mrs. Castro about
inadequate subs, she made everything seem simple. She said that teachers
have a right to request a certain sub. If that sub is not available,
they get whoever is there. And that sub is responsible for following the
teacher's lesson plans. If the teacher is not happy because the sub
didn't follow the lesson plan, then they can request not to have that
sub back. But that sub can be placed into another classroom and if it
happens again, then the principal is responsible for filing an
"inadequate service" card. But when I asked my principal how many
"inadequate service" cards he had filed during his two-year tenure at
Marshall, Mr. Abraham said he couldn't answer that because it was a
"personnel matter." Had he filed any at all? That was a personnel matter
too.
The requirement for subs isn't much: a bachelor's in anything and a
passing score on the C-BEST test. They, like the teachers, aren't
required to have teaching experience. According to Castro, those who
hire the subs are supposed to look for skills such as general discipline
in class management, patience, a sense of humor, a sense of
responsibility and the ability to follow directions. But as a student, I
can tell those who hiring the subs are sleeping on the job. I have had
subs who ran the class like a circus and who couldn't help the students
with the simple assignment that the teacher had left.
When I asked Mr. Abraham if there was grade inflation, he steadfastly
denied it, saying that there is deflation instead of inflation. But the
scores in the L.A. Times and my own experience show otherwise. A report
in a May issue of the Los Angeles Times stated that an A+ student in
1987 earned a 618 on the verbal section of the SATs and 639 in math. In
1997, the A+ student earned 608 in verbal and 637 in math-a decrease of
10 points in verbal and 2 in the math scores. The trend was the same
with lower achieving students: a student with a grade point average of a
C earned a 443 in the verbal and 439 in math in 1987. But in 1997 a
student with a grade point average of a C earned 17 points less on the
verbal and five points less on the math.
Mr. Abraham said, "I don't think there's grade inflation because
there's so many students getting Ds and Fs. But I can't dispute a
survey."
I have had classes where I got an A for filling out worksheets.
According to the Los Angeles Times, many teachers accept comic books for
classroom reading. Many students who get As, Bs and Cs in the AP classes
cannot pass the AP exams. Why? I believe it's because of grade
inflation.
Castro claimed that in order to retain good teachers, the district was
offering competitive salaries, good benefits and opportunities to grow.
But the only thing that Grakal, who has been teaching for many years
could say is, "that it is better than it used to be." Abraham agreed.
We must work together
Even with all the faults with our system, there are many positive
things taking place. More students are involved with the AP program, the
academic decathlon program, and speech and debate teams, which regularly
compete with and win over private school students. Even with all the
unqualified teachers, there are some great ones. My three-pound calculus
book (the one I waited two months for) is great. In addition, the drop
out rate has decreased.
Students can do their share to make sure that they receive a good
education. They can take rigorous classes and do the assigned work. In
addition, they can report to their teachers and principals when they
have an inadequate sub. Superintendent Ruben Zacarias has allocated a
large sum of money for textbooks. There is no reason why any student in
the LAUSD should be without a book. Mr. Collins said, "you tell me the
student that doesn't have a text book, and I will walk out there and put
a new textbook in their hands."
And if you want clean bathrooms, keep them clean. It is us, the
students, who stuff paper towels in the sink, throw wet balls of paper
at the ceiling and tag the walls. Most schools have school-based
management meetings where students can bring up issues which concern
them. It is also at these meetings were issues like the dress code are
discussed and often passed. Because of lack of student representation in
these meetings, administrators and teachers are often able to pass
regulations which the students might not like.
We have to start taking responsibility. We have to stop pointing
fingers and start working as a team if we want to get the education we
deserve.
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