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ADE CITY -- Pasco school officials have a message for those who
think new tests and tough laws can eliminate the commonplace practice
of promoting academically unqualified students.
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| Charles "Jake" Jacobsen intructs his ninth-grade class in basic
letter-writing skills last month. [Times photo: Toni L. Sandys] |
Eight years ago, Pasco school officials began sweeping changes aimed at raising academic standards while cutting the district's dropout rate. Experts say Pasco is ahead of most other Florida districts in adopting the new teaching techniques. They say the new methods are also key to curbing social promotions, educators' term for passing students to the next grade level when they haven't made the grade in their current class. Yet even as the reforms rumble on, some hundreds of teachers say the efforts have done little to eliminate social promotions, and many residents struggle to understand why the changes were made and how they work.
Pasco's effort illuminates the difficulty Florida schools face as they try simultaneously to restructure schools, raise academic standards and eliminate social promotion.
"All around the state and nation, everybody is struggling with the same issues," said Susan Rine, Pasco's director of elementary schools. "How do you motivate kids and get them engaged? How do you get them to meet the highest standards we've ever set for them?"
State lawmakers and education officials are attacking social promotion. In the last two years, they've launched a series of tough new tests intended to measure how well students are learning. And last year, legislators quietly passed a law that may force schools to hold back thousands of underachieving students.
Pasco's road to reform started in 1990, when the district started its first "continuous progress" classes in elementary schools. The structure erased the lines between grades and put children of different ages side by side in the same classrooms.
The multi-age groupings rendered moot standard, grade-level curriculums. Teachers began weaving lessons from different subjects into single class projects, tailoring them to each child's capabilities. The district scrapped cut-and-dried promotion standards and emphasizes allowing children to learn at their own pace. And instead of getting new teachers every school year, students stay with a core group of instructors for several years.
If done correctly, such reforms should make promotions and retentions -- and thus social promotion -- irrelevant, supporters of the program say.
"After I've already had the students for two years, I know what their strengths and weaknesses are," said Carol Hatfield, who has been teaching continuous progress at Pasco's Centennial Elementary for five years. "Children who are behind are able to work at their own level. I've been teaching a long time, and this has the kids more involved."
Similar changes at the middle school level have many teachers thinking the system is too soft on kids. In middle school, the emphasis appears to be on boosting kids' self-esteem, several teachers said. All too often it means sacrificing difficult school work.
"Self-esteem is the No. 1 word in middle school," said Bayonet Point Middle School teacher Jim Wilcox. "The whole system has bred mediocrity. I really don't think we ask enough of kids."
Along with continuous progress came a district policy of "teaching the whole child." Simply put, it means teachers must also take into account their students' home life, health and emotions when making academic decisions.
"We consider their economic background and social background as well as their academic background," said Wendy Carswell, a continuous progress teacher at Centennial. "We're actually assessing them on their own, individual criteria."
While there is a large contingent of teachers who agree with that philosophy, there are others who think it has withered school standards.
In December, the Times surveyed Pasco teachers on the subject. A majority of the 339 teachers who responded said at least one student in three lacks the skills to do the work assigned.
"We have children in the third grade who are just learning to read, and that's a crime," said Charlene Daniel, a former Pasco County teacher of the year. "Students should leave first grade proficient readers. You can't let them go on with the rest of the class if they can't keep up."
Administrators say such criticism is overblown, adding that they have the data to prove it.
Despite a 14 percent jump in the district in the number of children from low-income families, Pasco test scores have climbed almost every year since the reforms started. Last year, Pasco boasted Florida's top scores on the state graduation test. This year's state writing and FCAT test scores were at or slightly above state averages. And the district's graduation rate is up substantially, too, hitting 72 percent last year, an increase of six percentage points since 1990.
"That tells me that we're doing something right," said Superintendent John Long.
Adds, Bill Alexander, an administrator who helped develop the programs: "Ten years ago, our dropout rates were higher, and our test scores were lower."
Other data suggest the critics might not be all wrong. For example, one in five 10th-graders don't pass enough classes to go on to 11th grade, and therefore never take the graduation test. And exactly half of last year's seniors who enrolled at Pasco-Hernando Community College had to take at least one remedial class.
Principals contend that the problems pointed out by critics can't be blamed on the new system. Large numbers of kids have always struggled in school, and there has always been frustration over how to reach them. The problems many teachers complain about were problems under the old system, too.
"Has everyone always been on grade level? No," said Hudson Middle School principal Larry Albano. "Are we now saying that everyone has to be? Nobody ever talks about the 90 percent of the kids who do well."
The new system isn't good enough for Peggy Kile's son, Nathan. The boy spent two years in a continuous progress class and never learned his alphabet sounds and, even though he was 7 years old, wasn't even close to reading. Kile said Nathan's teachers at Centennial Elementary in Dade City gave her no indication that anything was amiss.
"He didn't know what a vowel was," Kile said. "He was just being pushed along. When would they have caught this, in middle school?"
This year, Kile pulled Nathan son out of Centennial and enrolled him in a more traditional class at Woodland Elementary in Zephyrhills. His new teacher, Cindy Fettig, said schools are too soft on kids.
"If a child has not grasped the fundamentals of reading by the end of first grade you cannot promote them on," Fettig said. "I am amazed at what children can do when you expect a lot out of them. What you have to do is put pressure on children to perform their best."
Supporters of the reforms acknowledge the dissension. But they say the new system gives teachers the flexibility to hone their student's skills at a rate that keeps the kids excited about school. It creates a caring, nurturing environment -- a linchpin in Pasco's school-improvement efforts.
"We end up with very few behavior problems because children are
being successful and are learning continuously," said Centennial's
Carswell.
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