Editorial: The Paly English kerfuffle

I know the board should ignore that “earful from parents prior to the meeting”. What on earth is the board doing listening to parents!

If the teachers really think diversity in the classroom helps learning, then I trust the parents to make the decisions.

…and if Wasc believes diversity/non-segregated classes are best, do you still trust the parents over the accrediting body?

In January 2013, in a room full of 8th grade parents ready to register their child for 9th grade at Paly, Principal Winston surprised parents with the announcement that Paly would only be offering English 9. Soon after that was an email to Jordan parents saying that, on second thought, both 9 and 9A would be offered.

Like in 2013, this year Paly was so confident that this would finally happen — except this time it was only offering English 9 Advanced — that it sent the 8th grade course catalog with the one 9th Grade English class to print before the board, students and parents heard about the proposal.

In neither year did Paly give the school board time to understand it and get their questions answered before 9th grade registration started and ended.

Getting it to the board so late probably had lots to do with why it was pulled. Just getting the public airing that the Weekly mentions takes lots of time since PTAs and Site Councils only meet once a month.

Paly has a full year until registration 2015 to re-propose it. If it starts this Fall, doesn’t rush things, and is open to input, the third time may be a charm.

Excellent piece. Here is what I found most salient: “But if we entrust our kids to the teachers of this self-proclaimed lighthouse district for their education, then we owe them the benefit of serious and respectful consideration of a carefully developed proposal. If our pediatrician or accountant, having come to know our kids or our finances, recommends we do certain things based on their professional judgment, our first reaction isn’t to stop talking about it and reject the recommendations because we think we know better or because it’s causing angst in the family.”

As many in our community know, my perspective as a former Stanford dean and current Palo Alto parent is that we parents are over-involved in the lives of our kids. The more educators I speak with about this issue, the more I hear, “Parents don’t trust us. They’re constantly questioning our authority.” Whether it’s teachers, principals, referees, coaches, (etc.) the old mantra of question authority has gone into hyperdrive; we parents seem to think we know better. About everything. It’s tiring and tiresome. Yeah we do have one of the top school districts in the country, and the best teachers are attracted to it. How bout we let them do their jobs, and if they dare to innovate (how very Palo Alto of them) let’s encourage that and see what happens. If it turns out to be a disaster our kids can write about that ‘hardship’ on their college applications. LOL. But seriously. Teachers are educated professionals. Let’s treat them that way.

PS/I use my real name when I post because though the arrows will no doubt come my feeling is if I have an opinion and choose to blast it all over the community, I ought to own it. I encourage my fellow Palo Altans to do the same.

Sounds to me like Skelly and the Board could give a Damn. Can the Board be Recalled?

This is a good editorial. However, it fails to take into account one salient point that I think must be reported. The WASC Accreditation committee specifically called out the 9th grade english class as racially segregated. As it currently stands there are few or no minority students (self-identifying as Black or Latino) in English 9A. They are all in English 9. The only white students in English 9 are special education students. This is a big problem because it results in de facto segregation by race and disability. It strongly suggests that the 8th grade counselors at Jordan are engaged in racial and disability based steering of students into the 9 class.

WASC wanted that fixed, and the district specifically asked our English teachers to fix it. They fixed it. First they attempted to eliminate 9A. That produced a firestorm of protest from 9A parents who wanted honors level work for their gifted children in 9th grade, not 10th grade — as suggested by Dean Julie above. Then they went back to the drawing board and found that when they raised expectations for all students by offering the same rigorous curriculum of 9A to the disabled and minority students clustered in english 9 they raised their performance. As if by magic the number of Ds and Fs being received by those students fell.

When a higher exepctation was given to those students, they performed to the expectation. With this finding, supported by academic research, was presented to the board as support for raising the bar for all students, instead of the applause these teachers should have received for “thinking outside the box” and bringing research and data into an important conversation — that is, for doing what we want them to do, they were treated shamefully.

It is not a problem when the board gives a serious consideration to the teachers, the district recommendation, and the parents and then sides with parents. It is a terrible problem when the teachers get no respectful hearing in the first place and instead are just shot down at 1:00am.

Another piece of evidence that must be considered is the startling admission, made at 1:00 in the morning, by Dr. Tokheim, that Paly english is currently “out of compliance” with federal special education law. There are currently so many special ed students clustered in English 9 that the district is required by law to have a special ed certified teacher in the room. That is now a special ed classroom. Of course, the black students in there are not special ed, so they are being taught in a de facto special ed class even though they are not special ed at all, raising questions about why all the black students are in a de facto special ed classroom (possibly also in violation of disproportionality).

The current California State Special Ed Compliance Auditor should be informed that the district has admitted to the school board that it is “out of compliance” and the board shrugged.

Meanwhile, it should also be noted that Mary Vincent, the co-chair of the Special Ed CAC supported the proposal.

The information about de facto segregation was not presented to the community or to the board. Why not? Who at the district covered it up? The Weekly should be following up and doing a news story about that and about the “we are out of compliance” admission and I hope it is.

@Ed
I don’t believe your numbers on the SPED kids. There aren’t enough of them to fill all of those sections. You say that none of the URM kids in 9 are SPED – that must mean all of the URM SPED kids are in 9A?
And the magical grade improvement – could it just be grade inflation?

Jordan and Paly really need to do some overhauling but without taking choice away and without grinding all SPED kids of all races into the ground.

@Edmund Burke – English 9A is not an honors level course, it is an “accelerated” course. I have a child who is now a junior and was in English 9. He was not a special ed student and neither were his many friends that were in his class. None of them were minorities. All of them took 9 instead 9A because they were concerned about the additional work load of 9A. That same year, there were enough disruptive students in another section of English 9 that Mr. Winston team-taught the class with the teacher, I have no idea whether the kids were special ed or just disruptive.

If there is sufficient differentiation in an English classroom, which would require the teacher to be very proactive in leading discussions, I can totally see how all students could be both challenged and supported. That would require prompt editing and returning of work by the teacher (rules out Mr. Hinton teaching freshman English) but it could certainly work.

As said above, if the teachers put so much thought into this, with the mandate from WASC that we desegregate classes (which is an issue in all of the “lower” level classrooms), we should trust them to implement it.

Am I missing something?

Where is the data on which English classes special education and minority students are enrolled in and in what numbers and who is and isn’t getting Ds and Fs reported – pre and post-raised expectations — that teachers brought into this conversation? Someone asked for the breakdown but no one shared it, at least in view of the video camera at the board meeting that night.

Taking your view on a course’s racial composition to its logical conclusion, are we to presume that all lanes in all subjects in all grades in all K-16 public schools that are not racially balanced are that way because teachers are racists and the school district is left with just two choices: prove that its teachers aren’t bigots or eliminate all lanes?

How about this option: allowing all students to take the class level they want and let them change during the year if the one they chose is not the right fit (what PAUSD does now)?

@voter

“Having a team of one standard and one SPED teacher is not out of compliance and does not turn a classroom into a SPED – it is called “inclusion”, something Paly has striven for since Phil started there.”

The teachers were adamant that there is not currently co-teaching in the English 9 classes and that they did not have the resources to have co-teachers. I believe that this is the “out of compliance” issue.

“wouldn’t segregated mean that no urm students were allowed in either the 9 or the 9A? wouldn’t it also mean that no white or asian students were allowed in a classroom with the urm students?

There is a difference between de jure segregation, which is segregation required by law and de facto segregation. What you describe is de jure segregation. What the 9th grade english program at Paly encapsulates is de facto segregation. When you see that in 9th grade a great disproportion of minority students in one class that raises a concern about de facto segregation.

The visiting 2008-09 WASC committee found that this was a concern, noting in the section of the report regarding closing the achievement gap (p.66-67) that “integrating the two lanes” was a remedy for the achievement gap that needed to be accomplished in order to “provide a wider diversity of students
with the skill sets necessary to be successful in its higher level selective courses.” The WASC elsewhere notes that the English department took a full day to discuss and evaluate laning.” See: http://paly.net/sites/default/files/Paly_WASC_SelfStudy_2008-2009.pdf

Thus, the visiting WASC committee noted 6 years ago that the English 9 laning was de facto segregated and that the lanes needed to be combined in order to ensure that everyone had the skill sets to be successful in higher level courses. That was in 2008 (6 years ago). This has been under study for a long time. It was not secret. It was in the WASC. The Site Council was involved, the WASC committee was involved. Three principals were involved. This has in no way been hidden from the community.

I guess site-based decision-making only happens when it’s convenient for Skelly and the Board.

Just because the WASC visiting committee suggests one way to “desegregate” the classes does not mean Paly needs to do it their way. The more direct way and more beneficial way would be to deal with the issue in elementary and middle school classrooms and counseling departments at all three levels by getting students ready to fulfill their potential and directing them to the correct lane in 9th grade.

This delaning idea is still a band aid on the NPA culture. Much better to deal with the race problems head-on than to rob struggling students of an appropriate education. I’m betting the WASC visitors did not get the full story from staff or committee. Had they had all the info they would have realized that the pull to the advanced side is too strong in PAUSD for teachers to resist.

WASC report: http://www.paly.net/sites/default/files/Paly_VC_MidtermReview.pdf

“[…] there is no evidence that all students have equal access to all classes, including AP classes. Nor is there any evidence provided that African-American and Latino students are equitably represented in AP classes. On the other hand, they are over-represented in lower lane classes. “Laning” continues to be a topic of controversy”

Well, at least they got the last sentence right.

Edmund Burke,

Thanks for the link to the WASC report.

If you read that 2008-09 report carefully you will see that the recommendation of “integrating the two lanes” was written by the Paly English Department after spending a day looking at the issue, not by the independent visiting WASC accreditation reviewers. So that doesn’t add anything to the discussion beyond what we already know – some Paly English teachers don’t like that Paly offers students two levels of rigor.

What the independent WASC reviewers said in their 2009 report is that different lanes in both English and math are one of Paly’s “areas of strength.” They say make it so that all classes are open to all students and exert more energy in encouraging minority students to take higher level classes. No where that I saw just now do they say that all students should be forced to take English 9A, which is Paly’s January 28th proposal.

Am I missing something here too?

It doesn’t mean its a bad idea, it just means that it wasn’t WASC’s.

http://www.paly.net/sites/default/files/WASCVisitingCommitteeReport%2009.pdf

@moderator – may I suggest to consider adding this thread to the Schools & Kids category?

Julie Haims,

Maybe you haven’t listened to the video of the board meeting yet and are just basing your observations on the Weekly’s article summarizing what happened that night. Take an hour or so and listen to it. It’s illuminating.

I agree 110% with your call to respect teachers and it troubles me too when parents complain. Teachers know far more than I ever will about content and how to inspire students to learn. For that and so many other things teachers do, I am grateful and remind my child to think of it as an honor to have had the privilege of being in their classrooms.

But the decision of whether to offer English 9 or not is different. It is setting curriculum which under law or board policy, or perhaps both, our elected school board is the authority. The teachers understood that, which is why they stayed up so late that night. Teachers asked the board for permission to not offer English 9. They were very polite and deferred to its authority. The teachers may have been disappointed but no one, not teachers and not board members, was disrespected.

As for the “carefully developed proposal,” part of what seemed to cause the board consternation was that the response to many of its questions, including the cost for additional supports the teachers called for, was “that is something we know we still have to figure out.”

I suspect next time Paly teachers will return with answers to their questions.

It should be embarrassing to be reciting plans from 2008 – 2009.

It should be embarrassing not to have accomplished goals from 2008-09. That’s what should be embarrassing. Gah this is so corrupt.

I’m familiar with some of the names being dropped here who supported the de-laning:

Kindel Launer (9th grade English lead): She “taught” 9A but it was so easy that it should not have been labeled an accelerated class, so perhaps this is why she thinks it’s acceptable to combine the classes.

Mary Vincent (Special ed co-chair): She adopted a special ed from Mexico so is she is biased?

Shirley Tokheim (English dept. head): Nice, but doesn’t teach how to write.

Kirk Hinton: almost never gives “A”s, doesn’t teach how to write, doesn’t comment on papers, and notorious for returning papers at the end of the semester.

If we lose English teachers after this upset, I hope the new teachers teach our children how to write. With tweeting, our children need to learn how to write properly. Unfortunately, our current English teachers are too busy to spend time after school correcting papers, thus, they aren’t effectively teaching
English. The School Board must know that the Paly English Department is deficient from all the parent feedback in emails.

To reduce the proposal to a minority/special ed argument is ridiculous – this isn’t a race issue – minorities are not forbidden from enrolling in 9A. English 9 is about 50 percent minorities but it’s their choice to enroll in the regular lane.

If the accusation Edmund Burke makes about Jordan counseling would be true, this assumes the schools do not talk with each other about how to lane students.

Whose job is it to do this?

How many meetings have the Jordan and Paly English teachers had in the last 5 years?

These are the steps for going forward, some stats, etc taken off of the January 28th school board meeting video.

1. On the work the Paly English Department still wants/has to do:

– Better serve all students when teaching a wide disparity of abilities in one classroom ~ Paly’s English IS

– Figure out a way to require struggling students to go to tutorial and get support ~ Paly’s English IS

– To evaluate the pilot’s success, get 40 hours of district time to devise quantitative metrics and gather suggestions of ways to gather qualitative information from students and parents ~ Paly 9th Grade English lead

– Bring English class sizes down – #1 priority ~ Paly principal

2. On information Paly English teachers said would be helpful to know:

– Why 8th grade students select 9 instead of 9A and why students in 9A who are scoring 3s – not proficient – chose 9A instead of 9. ~ Paly 9th Grade English lead

– How the 13 English 9 students, who tested below proficient and still need more resources to succeed, are doing now ~ Paly’s English IS

– Parents’ thoughts and concerns ~ Paly’s English IS

3. Paly’s Observations:

– 73% of English 9 students are overqualified for that class, 27% are not.

– 56 9th grade students at Paly have IEPs/504 plans. IEP and 504 students are enrolled in both 9 and 9A.

4. Mentioned but details not shared:

– Education research that supports the English 9A proposal

– How resources will be allocated to better support struggling students

– Paly’s revised English 9 alignment and pacing plans

– Paly’s plans for de-laning other grades and subjects

@been there thanks for the FUD. The superintendent said this is dead and not coming back. It’s over. Delaning will not happen at Paly just like TA will not happen at Gunn. Both decisions made in secret not in public.

Editor — why does “Answers” get to say that about Mrs. Launer? That is an accusation essentially of incompetence in her profession. She is a HS teacher not a public figure. I know you deleted the worst crap and garbage out of that post (attacking a special needs child? Publicizing who is adopted? What a dickhead “answers” is and also what low, low depths these pro-tracking racists are willing to sink to)) But you missed a spot. Do you have a reason it is reasonable to accuse her of professional incompetence in a publication? If not, fix it.

People who supported the proposal are either parents who have no experience with the two lanes (children are too young), parents who are playing the race or elitist card, or those who are blindly supporting the teachers. None of these are good reasons to support the proposal.

The Paly catalog states the workload differences between the two lanes, and students with 650+ SAT verbal/writing scores should not be mixed with students with 350 SAT verbal/writing scores – it’s a disservice to students on each end of the spectrum. What the English department needs to improve is the teachers following the workloads as stated in the catalog, and tougher grading standards for 9A. Some 9A teachers teach the class as if they are regular lane. Maybe this is how they have concluded that both lanes are the same.

The adage about cake and eating it comes to mind as I read through these threads and others over the years. Even amongst advocates of laning, I have read varying accounts of what is wanted out of a 9A class. Follows is a list of interests demanded of the teachers according to these threads:

1) Teach 9A more rigorously.
2) Don’t stress kids out.
3) Make sure there are more As than currently given.
4) Ensure that the “whole” student is being taught (a la the Campanile article)
5) Don’t assign “too much” homework (which is defined as a range between any and more than 30 minutes a night).
6) Assign “enough” writing (defined as 1-2 pages a week by some parents, 1500 word essays by the state, and 7-9 page research papers by polled Paly graduates).
7) Make it relevant to each individual student’s life goals.
8) Don’t make it boring.
9) Don’t kill kids’ love learning.
10) More?

Many of the above are not mutually exclusive for a highly skilled educator. Some are incompatible. To assume that everyone (parents/students) in 9A want the same thing seems to be incorrect from these threads. So which interests are catered to and which are tossed? Who gets to dictate what becomes institutionalized practice?

For me, it isn’t about this individual issue of laning, it’s about the process for making the decision. I think it would help everyone if there was a more transparent process of making decisions–some parents knew about the proposal a year ago via Winston, the 8th grade parent night and site council. Others only became aware after the board meeting or during the follow-up parent meetings with the department.

The teachers were caught in the cross-fire here. I cannot imagine how frustrating it must be to be charged with balancing disparate agendas only to have the proverbial rug pulled out from under you.

I learned a few things from reading this. Thank you “which parents” for your summary. It seems right to me, particularly your conclusion.

I learned that the driving anxiety that upper class parents feel about whether their kids are going to get into the right colleges extends down to 9th grade, something I should have known but did not. Parents want their children advantaged in the ‘race’ and are very scared and worried about every aspect of their education. Are they really getting set up for ‘success’ narrowly defined? If not, where do the schools fall short?

We interrupt our usual programming of “Our Wonderful Schools and Our Wonderful Teachers” to bring you a loud episode of “Angry Dissatisfaction With Our Truly Mediocre Schools and Lazy Teachers”. This isn’t what we are used to hearing at all. We are used to getting 24-7 PR about how great it is in PAUSD. We have wonderful staff, we have wonderful curriculum, everyone is above average, our 25% percentile is the 75% percentile in the state. We are fantastic and all is well.

Now what we see is that parents are very angsty about English. They are extremely nervous and discontented with whether or not the teachers are teaching their kids to write. This seems to start in elementary and middle school, where people seem to think the education is all but worthless. Once 9th grade starts, this argument goes, the real deal is supposed to begin. Now we get the return on those dollars! We have been putting up with untracked BS, lousy no writing, zero real value education and now we are going to leave all the losers behind and get Junior ready for Harvard. Except it is not working! Why not? The teachers are not teaching Junior to write well — he writes so badly that mom and dad will have to help with his college essay (but not too much otherwise Dean Julie might be able to detect that help and foil the whole plan). I can feel the breath of a billion Chinese on the back of my neck as I read these comments. Do you feel it English teachers?

So what are our takeaways of parent views? What does this little survey of our parent community tell us (and please remember that these are also the views of 4 out of 5 board members surveyed and caught on video camera in an especially unguarded 1:00am board session)?

1. The schools are horrible. They are not teaching anyone gifted to do anything. The mixed ability groupings in elementary and middle school are worthless for smart kids, because teachers are incompetents who cannot actually be counted on to “differentiate” the instruction. They just teach lazily to the middle and low performers and the high performers are left to be bored.

2. This has been tolerated in lower grades because really, who cares. But once the rubber meets the road in high school we have lanes not because we are against educational research. If our teachers were at all competent we would be happy to let them apply research all day long. But our teachers are terrible. So we have to have laning to ensure that our high performing kids are ready for the high-stakes competition.

Laning is NOT because we’re racist. Laning is because our teachers suck and can’t or won’t do differential instruction. And if they fail to do that, our kids won’t get into good colleges and that is not a risk we are willing to take. It doesn’t have to be Harvard. Williams will be fine, thanks. But Cal State is not. If that starts happening, we will turn into Sequoia Union and we will take our kids and put them in Sacred Heart and Menlo. We didn’t sign up for Measure A and donate to PIE because we planned to send our kids to private school. This is a bargain. We, the rich parents of gifted kids made a deal. We kept our end. You keep yours, PAUSD.

3. In sum, our teachers are not evidently viewed by the majority of the influential 400 citizens of PAUSD as good, or great. They are viewed as terrible. Laning prevents white flight from the district and it is the devil’s bargain that makes Measure A and PIE and all those things holding up your property values even possible. If laning goes, the bargain goes. Not because they’re bigots but because the teachers are seen as terrible.

Board, don’t give us any more praise of the staff. Your true views of the staff have now been revealed. You think the staff is pretty incapable. Melissa Caswell said it best: “this might make it easier for teachers but I don’t think it will be better for kids.” Aha.

explainer,

Some kids just want to have the English credit to be A-G college ready, and if you get a D or an F in English you could have done everything else, but that one class could mean everything.

It’s not about Harvard. Others want to learn.

You are disrespectful of the students.

EDIT

The teachers are “mystified” about why so many high scoring students choose to NOT go into the advanced lane.

Students/parents have been voting to NOT go advanced.

Now these same students are on AUTO being placed in the advanced lane, supposedly by your rant the Harvard elite lane.

explainer,

“3. Your third post is my personal fave. All those black and brown kids are “flocking” to the lower lane. How dare I and the teachers suggest there is any issue with that. Again, your concern for these kids, while late, is truly touching me. Where I cannot print.”

If the teachers had data that the color of the high scoring students is brown and black, would they have not had the responsibility to present that?

I don’t know Laura Janov, or all the elite parents you are upset about, but I find it a stretch to accuse an entire community of being racist, and obsessed with Harvard because of this proposal. Not everyone is obsessed with Harvard.

It sounds like you and I would like to see the students do better though. This proposal addresses your racism charge, but it does not go to the heart of the problem, which appears to be resources. Instead of waiting 5 years, 2 years, or for the next chance to bicker about lanes, I would think resources are urgently needed for supporting special ed, and the students who are struggling.

Why are people waiting to help these students?

To be fair to the community, if this proposal was to make a racism charge, saying “we do not know why” high scoring students are choosing the lower lane is not enough.

The Weekly has not taken down Edmund Burke’s charge “the 8th grade counselors at Jordan are engaged in racial and disability based steering of students into the 9 class.”

I’m not an expert on the legal implications about this, but I imagine Edmund Burke will let us know soon enough.

And if that is the problem, they could have fixed counseling 5, and 2 years ago as well.

Sally Torbey has written an excellent blog post on this topic, and has lots of interesting public comments posted in response. Check it out at this link:

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/blogs/p/2014/02/11/delay-in-de-laning-paly-9th-grade-english-is-unfortunate

RIK: “This was a two-year researched proposal “

Edmund Burke: “supported by academic research….bringing research and data into an important conversation”

Gunn Mom: “The teachers conducted extensive research, had data to support their positions”

Explainer” “the research supports them”

Weekly: “well-researched”

Where did you all see Paly’s research?

At the beginning of the teachers’ board presentation, they mentioned research but said they did not bring it with them that night. Their written report to the board didn’t mention anything either other than a mention to an East Coast high school which de-laned (all?) classes up to or including 11th grade.

Is that the research everyone is referring to?

Mentioned at the board meeting was that struggling students at that high school are required to take two English classes a day to Paly’s one and classes there have half as many students in them as Paly’s do. The extra small classes and double time on task – something Paly’s proposal doesn’t call for – could be the reason for students’ success at that school.

@100 parents

I think that your last question is interesting. IMHO middle school in PAUSD is pretty terrible. But don’t believe me, look at the hordes of PAUSD parents dying to get into private middle schools. This year reportedly over 2/3 of Walter Hays 5th graders applied to private middle schools. Sadly, the drama of the gifted child continues, and there are not enough slots in the 5 or 6 desirable middle schools in the area: Sacred Heart, Menlo, Castilleja, Crystal Springs, Nueva, and the less elite alternatives of GMS and Priory.

The kids arrive at high school not very good at writing. You can have different theories about that — here’s mine. Writing can’t be taught by a tutor very easily. Unlike math and science where you can purchase the time of a Stanford grad student to pump your kid full of information, the critical thinking skills necessary for a humanities and liberal arts course like English can’t be tutored or crammed. And when do these overscheduled, over prepped, overcooked kids get that kind of reflective, thoughtful time? In the car on the way between the club volleyball tournament and YCS?

Our students exit middle school pretty awful writers. Now what? We have 4 years to get them ready for the great race. How will that happen? Who should we crap on if it doesn’t?

Let me change the subject a bit here, but it will come back on point. What are parents most worried about after “why Johnny can’t write?” It’s why doesn’t Johnny have a damn A and why are there so few damn As in this class? The falsely constricted distribution of As is a big deal here, and rightly so.

Now, what’s the best way to increase Johnny’s grade? Put some kids in the class who will likely get a lower grade! The curve will shift up. Your child getting a C will get a B. The child getting a B will get an A. The bottom will get Cs because we can’t have Ds and Fs, so the kids from 9 who struggle will get Cs (good enough for A-G. Your dullard will get a B, the new C. And so forth. So cheer up, anxious competitors. Once again, being white and rich has worked its magic and Johnny will be A-OK.

@been there

Try starting your research here: https://www.google.com/

@explainer has a good point, kids are not taught to at Jordan. I think both of my kids did more writing in 4th and 5th grade than in their 3 years at Jordan. I know my youngest didn’t write much of anything at all in 7th and 8th grade english (same teacher both years). The first substantial think either of my kids had to write was a research paper in 9th grade history.

Jordan has implemented some writing support and I think JLS is using some kind of similar rubric for all the english and history teachers.

There are some good English teachers at Paly and then there are those who don’t teach much writing and don’t hand back papers for months. Literally.

@Explainer

Your posts seem to be, in part, a reaction to what I said about my son not learning to write a decent essay in PAUSD. You may be right that the problem starts with instruction before high school. This is not acceptable either!

The point is I did not realize that until I saw his college essays, and here is why, and also where you have it wrong, at least about my son:

He always got As and Be in English. Thus, I was not worried, and hence my late realization of this sad state of affairs.

He was never tutored for anything, and we are not rich, just middle class. No stock options, IPOs or family trusts, etc. in our family.

An English class should not be just about reading and discussing literature, sorry. We should have an outcome of students being able to write a decent essay upon graduation from our school district (or any school district for that matter). And like it or not, the lack of emphasis on writing does make our teachers come across as lazy. Discussing life is more fun, easier, and less work, than teaching sentence and paragraph structure and grading essays.

It’s much like not teaching multiplication tables in elementary school because teachers have more “fun things” to do in math class. I was actually told this by an elementary school teacher here years ago!

Last point: If it’s expected that all parents should hire tutors to teach the basics, we should be told so upfront. We are not. Again, in our case we are a family that cannot afford tutors or private schools.

And no, we did nor write his college essays for him even though it was tempting.

PAUSD does not do its job teaching our kids to write.

@been there

The packet, which is here http://pausd.org/community/board/downloads/brd_packet/pkt_012814.pdf, starting at page 106 contains a lot of research and data about Paly students and their achievement.

This is “well-researched.”

However, I believe what you are asking about is not research into Paly’s data but research in the educational literature on the benefits of de-tracking for underrepresented minority achievement (and indeed, overall). Here are a few things:

http://www.wilsonsd.org/cms/lib01/PA01000270/Centricity/Domain/259/Closing_the_Achievement_Gap.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1177206?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103402986771

Oakes, J., Gamoran, A., & Page, R. N. (1992). Curriculum differentiation: Opportunities, outcomes, and meanings. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum. New York: MacMillan Publishing.

Bibilography on this subject:
http://www.ithaca.edu/wise/ability/

To summarize this extensive literature (my friends in the ed school should correct me where I err) it has been known for at least 20 years that tracking is detrimental to the outcomes of minority students. As far back as 1988 (under President Reagan) the DoE published a warning on the negative effects of tracking and ability grouping on minority students. This is such a well-known piece of information at this point that it has moved beyond theory to fact. The effects on upper-achieving children of detracking are also found largely to be positive or neutral.

The chief controversy in the de-tracking field is the tension between the persistent findings from research that it is harmful, and does not deliver the desired benefit to the high end (results flat or harmful) and the absolute cultural stickiness of the practice. School districts refuse to detrack due to irrational belief it the practice despite the repeated and consistent findings from peer-reviewed, published research.

Edmund Burke,

The laning research does not really have relevance to a poor writing curriculum, teacher quality, or meager resources for special-ed.

Getting rid of the lanes at Paly may dilute the concentration of IEP’s for the teachers (as they explained), but simply labeling a class advanced and doing grade inflation (per explainer’s suggestion) does not provide visible or measurable improvements in instruction for anyone.

We know the advanced students can take care of themselves, so this re-sorting may just make it easier to hide problems which have nothing to do with laning.

Would your ed school have an opinion about that?

Are we sure that the research in this field is not akin to the tobacco company funded research which did not find a problem with cigarette smoking?

Edmund Burke,

Maybe whether something is well-researched is a matter of opinion. I don’t see studies mentioned in the report. You say it “contains a lot of research” calling it “well-researched.”

Usually folks can find research that supports any conclusion they want so of interest is what Paly teachers found compelling.

Curious, I looked at one of your links and in it is a link to the 1998 Government report you say is a well-known warning on the negative effects of tracking and ability grouping on minority students.

That report doesn’t speak to the negative affects of those practices. It reads to me like the government supports ability grouping and tracking as long as “the criteria used by schools to assign students to ability groups or tracks [are] nondiscriminatory. Students must be given the opportunity to move from one ability group to another, or in and out of assigned tracks according to their progress.”

Paly has lanes, not tracks. Students choose, are not assigned to, their lanes.

“Are we sure that the research in this field is not akin to the tobacco company funded research which did not find a problem with cigarette smoking?”

Yes, it is exactly like that except without the multi-billion dollar multinational publicly traded companies that stood to lose trillions in profits unless they funded research saying that their product was safe. Except for the fact that no one profits, no one benefits, there are no financial interests, and the only beneficiaries of the research are poor black people instead of mega corporate interests — except for that they are exactly alike.

It appears that explainer has engaged in sarcasm.

The document that Burke is referring to is http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/tviassgn.html.

During the board meeting, the teachers acknowledged (in response to a comment from a community member) that black and Hispanic students are disproportionately taking English 9. The fact that the Paly principal, not only the teachers, acknowledged that the laning is not educationally justified, and that it has substantial negative effects on those students, puts this into the territory of a plausible violation of Title VI.

I was myself very surprised to see the school board members pass over this issue during the board meeting. The racial component to this situation obviously connects it to relevant civil rights law. I would think that this district in particular would be sensitive to that connection.

Something like what Burke suggests seems prudent. It would be far better for the district to acknowledge and address the problem voluntarily than to do so as part of an OCR enforcement action.

The teachers and principal of Paly appear to have come to the gradual conclusion, based on data and research into the outcomes and achievement of Paly students, that the English 9 class no longer had a valid educational justification for continuing to be taught (if it ever did). They now have concluded that its main current function is to track and create feelings of inferiority and incapability (labeling effects) in minority students. This labeling effect results in a disparate impact on those students in that they do not go on to take more challenging classes in the upper grades and that translates into worse outcomes for them.

The teachers do not seem to believe that tracking in 9th grade english serves a valid educational purpose. They believe that all students in 9th grade are fully capable of doing the work currently being assigned in 9A. The classes are not that different, and therefore the laning serves no purpose other than the assignment of stigma. That is exactly what OCR says you cannot do.

Just to clarify, I said above that the evidence of disproportionate numbers of minority students in English 9 ‘strongly suggests’ that counselors are influenced by race in making recommendations. Whether that influence is subconscious or otherwise, the strong correlation between race and lane is circumstantial evidence for that fact. If there is other evidence that could explain the gap, then it would defeat that inference.

You are substantially correct in the rest of your post. There would be no basis for making these classes different given that the teachers and principal have eschewed any educational purpose for that. Merely because parents believe in the existence of something (tracking helps everyone) does not make it true or educationally valid as respects 9th grade ELA. If the principal and teachers, including one with a PhD from UCB, think that it has no valid purpose I believe that would tend to establish that fact by a preponderance (OCR’s standard on investigations).

More resources are always a good thing. But if they aren’t forthcoming a district is not allowed to break federal law in order to channel what resources it does have in a discriminatory fashion.

The “drivers for the proposal” were given by the teachers — to improve outcomes for all students, especially those who are URM and currently overrepresented in English 9 (the low track). OCR has no basis to investigate whether the teachers are lying about that motive unless you have some evidence for that that is more than just the conjecture by Melissa Caswell in that regard. In point of fact, distributing the special ed students is also a valid goal from OCR’s perspective since clustering them into a class dominated by special ed students would defeat the legal requirement to educate them in general education wherever possible (LRE). This is the “inclusion” idea in PAUSD and it is a district priority. So distributing the special ed students to make them less clustered would not only NOT be seen by OCR as an ulterior motive, it would be a valid purpose for detracking of itself.

It does appear that PAUSD may be well on its way to have gotten itself into trouble with OCR and the Civil Rights laws yet again. Regrettable.

I didn’t back track, I quoted myself. You said that I stated that it is happening, I pointed out only that I said that the evidence “strongly suggests” it. It doesn’t much matter one way or the other.

The harm that is occurring to these students as a result of being placed in English 9, is acknowledged by everyone at the school and district. The minority students aren’t taking challenging upper division courses and aren’t graduating a-g. That’s a serious consequence and no one disputes that it is happening and that English is the strongest impediment.

To be honest, it would probably be a hard case to dispute if it was brought. The standard is just whether the process the district uses to assign laning is resulting in disproportionate assignment. It is. Then the inquiry moves on to whether there is valid educational purpose for that. The teachers say there isn’t. I don’t know what the district’s lawyers could do with that given the absolutely definitive statements of the principal and teacher that there is no good reason to teach these classes and distribute the students this way.

EB

Not sure the OCR would be in with you on this one.

There is no information on how these two course shake out ethnically. My child says half the 9th graders take English 9 and the English 9 class is awash with white kids so your premise that English 9 is a ghetto has not been established. If teachers lead you to that conclusion, I suspect they were embellishing. A few of Paly teachers’ words on that, like their view that a school in New York with 3 times the supports for struggling kids is similar to Paly’s, may just mean that they overstated facts to support their request.

Assume you are right that the two classes have the same content. What do minorities or any students forced to take 9A have to gain? Moving out of smaller classes with the extra teacher time into larger classes aka less teacher attention + more high ability students making it harder to stand out and earn good grades. Teachers said the content is the same so it is not as if students in 9A read more books and know more vocabulary as a result of the switch.

Is it the mindset thing – the names Paly puts on the classes – that you think will bother the OCR? Pretty sure that OCR has better things to do with its time than take issue with semantics and engage in psychological assessments of ego and self-esteem. It will look at the substance and focus on whether students access the same curriculum.

Back in the day, the course descriptions for the two classes were different so the classes, save a rogue teacher or two, could be different. In your view different content is a big problem too.

But according to the US government quote above, it seems OK by the feds for low-scoring students to be in lower laned English 9.

So what is left are high scoring minorities who were told to take English 9 instead of 9A and did. I bet there are none to a just few. For those few, are they in English 9 because of PAUSD’s low expectations? The teachers on the video said that they heard that high ability students pick English 9 to be with their friends. Parents said they pick English 9 because they want less homework.

Any 9th grader coming from Jordan will tell you that 8th grade teachers are very anti-stress and err on the side of recommending that students – regardless of skin color – take regular English at Paly which points to Jordan teachers not discriminating who they dole “low” expectations out to. The OCR would first have to establish that Jordan teachers had lower expectations of minorities which it doesn’t seem they do.

Why you see many of those students taking 9A instead of 9 is that some students have parents who override Jordan’s recommendation. Are parent overrides within the OCR’s purview?

I bet most teachers and parents take great issue with English 9 being referred to as “low” BTW. It is a UC approved college-prep class taught by credentialed teachers many who have advanced degrees and have taught for years. Students have desks, textbooks and supplies. We aren’t talking inner city and emergency credentials here.

@”again” says, “There is no information on how these two course shake out ethnically.”

One of the teachers during the school board meeting said in response to a community member that minority students are concentrated in English 9. That is the basis for the idea that this proposal mitigates the achievement gap. I have not seen a precise breakdown in public, but if that is true then the Superintendent at least has access to the demographics and can be presumed to be aware of it.

Well suppose for a moment that 9 and 9A really are the same class. That would mean that the students from either class should be encouraged by the TA’s to take upper division honors and AP classes. This is clearly not the case. It must mean that the TA’s at Paly either don’t know the curriculum as well as they should or that they are using race as a main factor to steer students into their futures.

Edmund Burke

“The minority students aren’t taking challenging upper division courses and aren’t graduating a-g. That’s a serious consequence and no one disputes that it is happening and that English is the strongest impediment.”

It may not mean anything to you, but at Paly there is zero consequence to graduating A-G, if you do not take 10A, 11H, or AP English in 12th grade. The driver of taking “challenging upper division courses” as the biggest impediment to minorities graduating A-G makes absolutely no sense, but please explain if you get it. The Dec 10 report on a-g completion points to reducing D’s and F’s as a top priority, there was nothing there about increasing expectations.

The only thing you and corporate lawyer may have a point about (regarding resources) is the inclusion for special ed. I would imagine however that when you call a class “advanced” there is educational purpose to not force special ed students into an advanced class. I personally would not accept it without the resources that are clearly missing, and the district should provide to support struggling students, now that they have auto enrolled them into 9A.

Edmund Burke,

It’s also misleading to generalize. There are many Hispanic and Afr. American students who are graduating A-G. They were presumably not hurt by English 9. It would help to have numbers of those not graduating a-g, and their specific reasons for initial English 9 placement. Moving lanes after 9th grade is in the control of the English teachers, over four years.

The teachers can’t have it both ways, to complain about few going into advanced classes and then saying these labels are reducing expectations. You’d have to eliminate the advanced classes altogether, and prove that the non-advanced classes are as bad as they say they are.

Below is a summary from the staff report that was presented to the board on January 28th. It lists the many supports already in place for struggling students. I’m not sure why some board members questioned this at the board meeting. Perhaps it was based on parent emails that are reflected in some of the comments above. In addition to what is listed below special ed students who are writing below grade can enroll in a separate writing course,English Language Arts Lab. There is also a safety net class called Restart for any students who fail the first semester.

This year 9 and 9A were taught with the same curriculum. This was achievable through differentiation in both reading and writing. The report points out that in many schools Freshman and Sophomore English classes are successfully combined as is the case with all Freshman and Sophomore English classes at Gunn High School.

The English department proposed merging the two lanes so that they could spread out struggling students, so that there would only be 2-3 students per class. This is another strategy that supports struggling students. Currently in English 9 there can be as many as half of the class in Special ED. This adds an undue burden due to case management both during and outside of classroom time. This year there are 44 students who scored basic or below that would be spread over 18- 20 sections of English.

Here is the summary from the report:
(See discussion 18 http://pausd.org/community/board/downloads/brd_packet/pkt_012814.pdf )

“While there is more work to be done, efforts to date include the following:

• Teachers developed common expectations and methods for teaching writing and used a common
rubric with descriptors of quality work.

• All freshman English teachers have taught or currently teach both English 9A and English 9, by
design, to ensure staff recognize and strategically address the needs of all students while continuing to
have high expectations for all students.

• At the beginning of the 2014-15 academic year, the freshman team will have created a rigorous
curriculum pacing guide to address all the Common Core content areas, which include: Reading,
Writing, Listening and Speaking, and Language.

• The instructional delivery model is currently designed to challenge the most advanced students.
The small number of students (44 students, spread throughout 18-20 sections) who need additional
support will continue to receive this support through co-taught classes, case managers, tutorial, and
programs such as RESTART, AVID, and FOS that will enable them to succeed

We have also examined practices at similar high schools in neighboring districts. Many high schools with
demographics similar to Palo Alto High School have organized their English classes by combining students
in English classes at both the ninth and tenth grade levels.”

I like the suggestion above to have all students enroll in 9A unless they schedule an opt out conference with the English IS.

@again: Anyone with experience at Paly knows that although students are taught the same curriculum, the same class can either be difficult or easy, depending on the teacher. While one teacher might outline the Industrial Revolution in a lecture, another might assign a 5-paragraph essay on the subject of how the economy was affected by the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, although English 9 and 9A teach the same curriculum, 9A requires more reading per night and deeper analysis. Some teachers (such as the Freshman English lead, Kindel Launer) don’t even assign SAT vocabulary words to learn (appalling) even in 9A. Others do assign vocabulary words and assign more words to the 9A lane, less words to the regular lane. And to those who think being in the regular lane “hurts the self-esteem” of the students, where is the data on how many regular lane students actively reach out to the teachers for extra help?

Ms. Launer – As a parent of one of your former students, I want to thank you for your enthusiasm and dedication when it comes to your students. We always felt that you were doing your best to push your students in the right direction while also supporting them. As for it being “appalling” that SAT vocabulary words were not an emphasis in your class, many/most of those words students will never use in real or their later academic life…

Minority students and low income students fail to graduate a-g at acceptable rates from Paly. That is a well-known fact and it is why PAUSD changed its graduation requirements to be higher than state “diploma” requirements. As part of tracking this issue, District statistician Diana Wilmot prepares an annual board presentation. In that presentation she breaks out the numbers and shows which a-g requirement is being missed by students. Many are missing more than one. More students are missing the a-g requirement for 4 years of english than any other requirement (math was a close second).

The relationship to English 9 is that students feel unsure of their abilities, and are not comfortable taking harder classes after English 9. That sorting and stigma carries forward into their performance (low expectations produces low performance) in their 10th grade course selection. They then begin to have trouble passing 4 years of english and ultimately do not have 4 years of english on their transcripts. The english department is trying to address this problem by greeting every student at Paly with the sense that they can achieve, are expected to achieve, and will achieve. Tracking them in 9th grade english undermines this effort.

And, since it is racially disparate and serves no valid educational purpose, it also may violate Title VI. It is hard to see why it would not. The principal and the teachers stated that the course tracking has no valid educational purpose. It doesn’t matter what people on TS think of whether they can fabricate a purpose or not. We already have the principal and teachers on record.

It’s obvious what the right course here is, but equally obvious that it will not be taken by district leadership.

@parent

Yes maybe all the black kids hate English and all the white ones don’t. It’s innate preference. Maybe it’s cultural. Nothing to do with tracking. All fixed. Keep these great ideas coming.

@ explainer Please don’t make my comment something it is not because I disagree with “EB”. I know plenty of kids who are sophomores, juniors, and seniors who took 9 because they disliked English. They were white. Believe it or not, it was recommended to them by their middle school teachers/counselors because they did not perform well in middle school english. People on this thread are trying to find a simple answer (de laning English) to solve a very complex problem. I agree with “again” who points out that Gunn with three tracks has more kids complete a – g.

Gunn’s higher a-g pass rate is due in part to having fewer of what William Julius Wilson called the “truly disadvantaged” in its minority student population. Gunn’s minority population looks different than Paly’s and has fewer disadvantages and more strengths. Just on the surface, Paly has nearly three times the percentage of African American students, and 20% more latino students. It also has more students who are low income.

Reaching below the surface, more of Paly’s disadvantaged students come from East Palo Alto and do not have the advantages that minority students who live in Palo Alto have. Even controlling for income, students living in Palo Alto are better off in that they live in a safe community that does not have gun violence or gangs as a feature of daily life. They also do not have to take a bus a long way from home to start and end their day. But beyond those visible issues, there are invisible disadvantages involving absent or incarcerated fathers, addiction, community disintegtration, and other issues that affect youth from severely underprivileged backgrounds. Those EPA students who come through the VTP program likely share many unobserved variables that make them somewhat better off given that their families had the drive and ambition to sign them up for VTP. But they are more disadvantaged, on average, than those who attend Gunn.

These differences in level of disadvantage are reflected in the a-g statistics from the 2 schools to some extent. For Latino/a students, in 2012 41% graduated a-g from Paly versus 61% from Gunn. For African American students, 53% graduated a-g from Paly versus 67% from Gunn.

There isn’t any evidence that Gunn’s minority students are graduating a-g at a higher rate because of 9th grade english laning. If that is your hypothesis please provide a shred of data to support it. Given the academic research on the harms of tracking to minority students, it is highly likely that tracking at Gunn is harming minority students there just as it is at Paly, and that if it was reduced the a-g rate at Gunn would be higher. Even though it is higher than the rate at Paly it is still very significantly below that for white and Asian students.

Likely implementing College Pathyways at Paly and reducing tracking at Gunn would both be good interventions. The former will likely happen but the latter will likely never occur given the swift death meted out to this idea.

Ms. Launer didn’t teach vocabulary when my daughter was a freshman; perhaps it’s changed. SAT words are important because SAT scores impact college admissions. It’s easier for students to learn vocabulary words in school versus studying on their own. My Paly graduate had teachers who did quiz on vocabulary, but not nearly enough words. When I attended Paly, we had vocabulary quizzes each week.

The proposal isn’t coming back to the school board because it was clear the first time that board members didn’t know what they were talking about. Dana Tom and company are not anxious for a repeat performance.

Not tracking the permanent scar of low expectations argument here either.

About half the students in our district take English 9 each year so say about 500 students/year. Last count shown in one of the links, 96 students did not graduate with 4 years of English / btw no information on which grades were missing. Ergo, most students who take English 9 enroll in and pass 4 years of English, complete a-g and go on to college.

So this is not about the permanent and long lasting stigma of being placed in a class called “regular” because 80% or more of the students who take that class do fine.

This is about a belief that this will get more seniors to take AP English so more can go to the Harvards, Stanfords and UC Berkeley’s of the world. Paly’s report to the board:

” Highly selective colleges prefer students who have taken rigorous high school courses—specifically AP English and AP U.S. History. With all students taking English 9A, all students will become more competitive for selective colleges. We believe all students should receive the accelerated instruction that will prepare them for future accelerated classes should they choose them.” http://pausd.org/community/board/downloads/brd_packet/pkt_012814.pdf

I’m all in for students being challenged and, for those who like summer homework and reading and writing at the college level before college, having AP English available to them. But taking away choice and making pretty big changes to core subject content so that all students can be Harvard admittable is not a district goal nor will it ever be because everyone else in our community and our schools seems to have a broader definition of student success.

Edmund Burke,

I think I have your argument down:

1. All minority students are enrolled in English 9 (no data on that tho).

2. All frosh in 9 get and internalize the message that being in the “regular” class means that they are not smart and will not graduate college-ready.

3. That mindset holds them back from passing the 4 years of English needed to graduate.

4. Therefore, 9th grade English courses need to be merged together to offset that stigma and the disadvantages East Palo Alto students bring with them to the classroom from home.

The numbers don’t bear that out.

50% of VTP students pass a-g just fine.

So even if all VTP frosh are in English 9 – your facts – the stigma of the “regular” English class is not preventing half of them from meeting a-g.

We are talking about 14 VTP students who did not meet a-g. Why do we need to run an experiment on the whole grade that might or might not work? Can’t those 14 students’ needs be immediately and more appropriately addressed individually?

BTW your take on East Palo Alto students (VTP students come from gang ridden neighborhoods, have absent or incarcerated fathers, and struggle with addiction) differs from ours. My child’s VTP friends come from large families who dote on their kids, with fathers who are at home (not in jail) working (not getting high).

I do not work for the district, but have students here. Much of the problem with students arriving at our high schools is the direct result of the absence of any discernible English program in Palo Alto middle schools. With ‘peer reviewed’ writing assignments, from which they learn nothing, to assignments that include filling in all the background with colored pencil, it is no wonder that the first year in high school English finds many students ill prepared and reluctant to take on a challenging class. As the result, high school English teachers are overwhelmed with remedial problems instead of being able to teach a prepared group of students. Although English skills are extremely important in life, this district acts as though math was the only thing that matters. This is evident when they dismiss the entire high school during math testing for only the highest lanes. Badly done. It is no wonder the English teachers are struggling to find a way of teaching English in this district that they can live with.

English teacher,

“high school English teachers are overwhelmed with remedial problems instead of being able to teach a prepared group of students.”

The teachers are not saying that. They are saying that this is an issue of racial segregation and special-ed inclusion. They said the middle schools do a good job.

@again

Don’t forget the number of white students who were unable to graduate a-g ready because of the missing English credits at Paly. Ed may think they were from broken homes, or Gunn has more advantaged white students.

As a parent of several Jordan then Paly students, none of my kids received much writing instruction from ANY English teacher at Jordan. Their best writing instruction came from one of the Jordan History teachers who two of my kids were lucky enough to have. I would be curious what percentage of the students that did not pass 4 years of English with C’s or better were from Jordan and how many were from JLS.

One of the issues that the English teachers at Paly are experiencing is that the regular lane of English contains classrooms filled with kids with IEP’s, 504’s and disadvantaged kids. They would – sensibly – like to spread these students out between all the sections rather than concentrate them in just a few.

That’s a good question, 100 Parents. I’m afraid what would help is not more testing. I believe the district still uses the ERB, which is not effective because the prompts are created by people who have no idea how to elicit a creditable response from any student anywhere. What would help is, as you say, honesty, which is in short supply in this district. In order for things to improve, we would have to be willing to face the truth behind the myth of Palo Alto’s great schools, which has inflated our real estate values, piled pressure on our students, and been falsely propped up by a dependency on tutoring. The resulting high test scores cause a constant influx of people who want the best for their children, and when they find instead a hodgepodge of great teachers doing their best among not so great or burnt out teachers, all of whom are under siege, they bring incredible pressure to bear on all district personnel to make the myth true for at least their child. As long as we care more for the myth than for the students and the quality of our community, we will continue to squabble over the many ways students fall through the cracks – that is – any student whose parent is not hiring tutors and spending their days on campus, or at school board meetings lobbying for their child alone. English should not be taught by peers. It should be taught by teachers who are free to teach at their full capacity. Palo Alto will not be able to do anything but move the pieces around on the board until this reckoning takes place. It will be too late for my children, who, in spite of many excellent teachers, have also had to be home schooled while dodging the pitfalls of our self congratulatory district.

English teacher,

What about 3 lanes with smaller class size, placement based on a joint evaluation by Paly and Jordan. The teachers at both schools can use their judgement to recommend placement – including special ed inclusion. Maybe even hire an outside consultant to help out. Each lane would have the objective to allow a student to advance according to their personal goals. It is a flawed objective to base an entire program on what “highly selective colleges” want. Many kids want the credit and a ticket to out of here. But everyone deserves a writing curriculum, and SAT help. Explainer commented that English is the place to have “thoughtful reflective” time, and certainly literature is a great way to do this, but most all students take the SAT. Would it hurt to teach to the test sometimes? I know heresy, but for the kids in the middle, those without tutors, English could be the best place to get standardized testing instruction.

Nothing will satisfy all the contributors here. Everyone wants what’s best for his or her student, or is just a permanent malcontent with a grudge.

>>if you put their own highly advantaged and ambitious kids into the same class with very disadvantaged kids the result will be greater failure for the low-performing kids and less good education for the top. It is hard to teach to a big spread and our terrible English teachers won’t be able or willing to do it. <<

Your teachers aren’t terrible. They’re educated, trained & human. Can they satisfy multiple conflicting aims within a public school? Probably not. Racism! Elitism! More SpED help! Does it benefit already high-performing kids to be in a class with others who don’t even know parts of speech? NO. Does it help less well-prepared kids to be in a class where their deficiencies will be even more obvious by comparison? NO.

The charges of racism are insulting to teachers. Is it possible that a “green” or “purple” child who wasn’t born in the U.S., whose parents aren’t literate in English or even in their native language, might not do as well as kids who’ve grown up learning English as a primary language? Absolutely! Why pretend otherwise?

It would also help to let the teachers teach, instead of having to spend time with idiotic parents insisting that because they have their own advanced degrees in some subjects that their offspring are surely gifted and should get higher grades on essays. One Paly mom bragged about her PhD while insisting that her kid’s paper had to be better than a B- because “I spent 2 weeks helping write it.” Duh. This stuff happens all the time.

What about the Latina recently caught having inflated the grades on her transcripts, thereby enhancing her chances of admission to upper tier schools? This is blatantly criminal & indicative of a lot of the cheating that goes on. Ask Skelly about that.

Grow up, people. Get racial politics out of the classroom & accept the fact that some kids are academically “brighter” than others. Nothing personal, just statistically true. If you don’t like it, go private & pay a school to design a program perfect for your kid.

@watcher,

You just quoted explainer. The “hard to teach to a big spread and our terrible English teachers” is explainer’s imaginary parent talk.

If you’re trying to make a point on behalf of teacher’s what’s the point? That parents with PhD’s are insufferable and Latino’s cheat? Not even sure how a student can “inflate” grades on a transcript, but you must be in the know.

Your suggestion “accept the fact that some kids are academically “brighter” than others. Nothing personal, just statistically true. If you don’t like it, go private & pay a school to design a program perfect for your kid.” Ummm, that would be convenient, just leave the brighter students to teach in public school.

100 parents –
Yes, I am in the know & you could be too. Ask Skelly. Ask the principal. Look around at entitled parents who pass that attitude to their kids – the ones we teach.

Instead of fretting about lanes vs. no lanes, why not work on an all-inclusive value system in which all are entitled to receive the best education they’re able to absorb? Work on ethics & honesty, as in parents not doing the kids’ homework then being dumb enough to complain about the grade the parents’ efforts merit. This helps kids how? Will they have profs on speed dial when the little darlings go to college?

How about ethics & honesty in Board & Admin. Worry about king-sized holes in IT which lets kids hack the system & change their transcripts. Worry about whether your kid at a 3rd tier school really would have been at a 2nd tier or better had it not been for his classmates who altered their own transcripts.

Ask Skelly about the deal Phil Winston got, allowing him to “resign” due to “health Issues” and sent off to teach a semester at a middle school rather than get the termination his inappropriate actions merited and which were very well documented.

One of the huge differences between the Paly English Department and the Paly Math (and somewhat Science) Departments is that the English Department cares about what their students learn and the Math Department worries about the prestige of their department/teachers and the math awards they can win.

We also live in such a math centric district (with talented engineering parents) that our efforts as a District focus on math to the exclusion of many other subjects.

Funny how adversaries became friends so quickly.

Edmund Burke, the Daubers, the Paly principal and Paly’s teachers are of like-minds on this proposal.

But not that long ago Dauber/We Can Do Better/Burke blasted Paly teachers as uncaring racists. WCDB railed on the “the Paly math department’s …elitist attitudes” with Dauber calling teachers’ words “bigoted racist claptrap”. http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2011/12/14/students-parents-challenge-schools-on-math.

Paly teachers must not hold grudges or be bothered when another department is the target.

But tides turn quickly. A few days after Paly teachers pushed for de-laning, an idea that We Can Do Better/both Michelle Dauber and Ken Dauber supported at the board meeting, Burke threatened to turn the Paly English teacher leading the charge in to the authorities based on three words she said at the board meeting. Burke: ”the startling admission, made at 1:00 in the morning, by Dr. Tokheim, Paly english … California State Special Ed Compliance Auditor should be informed “ http://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2014/02/14/editorial-the-paly-english-kerfuffle

Is Paly aligned with Burke’s idea to bring the OCR in?

Is Paly taking up Burke’s suggestion to enroll all students in 9A and force students who want 9 to “opt out”?

Seems so. Not a surprise since this was Paly English Department’s idea too. Vicki, writing above in the teachers’ voice, is promoting it: “I like the suggestion above to have all students enroll in 9A unless they schedule an opt out conference with the English IS.”

The thought here is that an opt out will ensure that English 9 dies from low enrollment.

Students will wonder what the difference between the two classes is. The course catalog only lists one course, so that doesn’t help.

So 500 incoming 9th graders will, as Vicki suggests, meet individually with Paly’s one English Supervisor – you know, the teacher who stayed up to 1am to convince the board that 9A for all is the only way to go – before registration ends next week.

That English teacher will tell those students what she told the school board: there is only one difference in the two classes – the name.

And then she will ask Susie whether she would prefer a class that says “advanced” on her transcript or one just called “regular”?

Susie might ask “how will that work?” And the English teacher will say that “we give everyone the same curriculum – same books, same words. But Susie, we differentiate. That means that if you are a quick learner we will give you 4 times the homework we give Mary, who is struggling in the class and works at a slower pace. Good news though. You both can get As in the ‘advanced’ class on your transcript if you meet the differentiated work expectations – ‘high’ or “low’ – we set for you. The beauty is that it is all subjective so everyone wins.”

Fact Check,

Check here for Michelle Dauber’s comments at the School Board meeting under the caption “English 9A Pilot”:

5:14 http://www.midpenmedia.org/watch/pausd_webcast/January/PAUSD_012814.html

“When de-laning has been studied, what has persistently emerged from the research is a quite persistent finding in education research over long periods of time studied in many different settings that children at the top do better…because they have the opportunity to help teach …[pointing to the Paly teachers she says who are nodding and “who know”]”

For more along those lines, read Edmund Burke above: “To summarize this extensive literature (my friends in the ed school should correct me where I err) it has been known for at least 20 years…The chief controversy in the de-tracking field is [that it] does not deliver the desired benefit to the high end “

Dauber’s words “bigoted racist claptrap’ were directed at a middle school teacher.

The board reads a lot of academic research. They have far more experience in it than random members of the public speaking at board meetings.
Odd that you should believe otherwise.

Fact check,

Research from 1986 and 1998 is pretty irrelevant if you compare it to Edmund Burke’s list of deficiencies in the English department which even “friends of de-tracking” admit to.

Dauber was happy to support the teacher proposal with no other data to support what the teachers said, other than the chart saying middle school is putting out kids with high scores, which the teachers explained they “don’t know” why these same students choose to take the lower lane.

The entire proposal was to get more students to take advanced lanes “later” and they had no observations as to why that may never happen anyway.

Anyway, it was not a proposal. In a non-transparent way the teachers already merged the two lanes, and the rest is about artificial posturing of placement. These same teachers asked for out trust that they will handle it form here on out. Let’s just say that is not going to help getting more students to take advanced lanes, unless maybe they think that the offer of grade inflation will help.

fact check,

Oh and there was talk about expectations at the board meeting. A person who is “in the know” @watcher, has an interesting take on expectations. “accept the fact that some kids are academically “brighter” than others. Nothing personal, just statistically true. If you don’t like it, go private & pay a school to design a program perfect for your kid. “

A few days after Paly teachers pushed for de-laning, with We Can Do Better/both Michelle Dauber and Ken Dauber supporting the proposal at the board meeting, Burke whose positions are often aligned with WCDB’s said that the authorities should be alerted to the Paly English department’s poor practices based on three words an English teacher said at the board meeting.

Burke: “the startling admission, made at 1:00 in the morning, by Dr. Tokheim, Paly english … California State Special Ed Compliance Auditor should be informed “ http://paloaltoonline.com/square/2014/02/14/editorial-the-paly-english-kerfuffle#comments

Is Paly taking up Burke’s suggestion to enroll all students in 9A and force students who want 9 to “opt out”? Seems so.

Not a surprise since this was Paly English Department’s idea too. Vicki, writing above in the teachers’ voice, is promoting it: “I like the suggestion above to have all students enroll in 9A unless they schedule an opt out conference with the English IS.”

The thought here is that an opt out will ensure that English 9 dies from low enrollment.

Students will wonder what the difference between the two classes is. The course catalog only lists one course, so that doesn’t help.

So 500 incoming 9th graders will, as Vicki suggests, meet individually with Paly’s one English Supervisor – the teacher who told the board that 9A for all is the way to go – before registration ends next week.

That English teacher will probably tell those students what she told the school board: there is only one difference in the two classes – the name.

And then she might ask Susie whether she would prefer a class that says “advanced” on her transcript or one just called “regular”?

Susie might ask “how will that work?” And the English teacher might say that “we give everyone the same curriculum – same books, same words. But Susie, we differentiate. That means that if you are a quick learner we will give you 4 times the homework we give Mary, who is struggling in the class and works at a slower pace. You both can get As in the ‘advanced’ class on your transcript if you meet the differentiated work expectations – ‘high’ or “low’ – we set for you. The beauty is that it is all subjective so everyone wins.”

I just want to clarify that I agree with Prof. Dauber that the comment from the supposed teacher was biased and based on race. I think it helps to see the quote:

“I have to say as a middle school math teacher in another district (not PAUSD), I am finding that some minority students will not do the work no matter how much I make myself available to provide additional help.”

Do you have any white kids who won’t do the work? Why say this about “minorities.” It is racist and Prof. Dauber rocks for saying it like it is. Funny that no one on the board had the guts to call out the math letter which said the same thing.

@Fact checker, so you really do believe that “random public” is more informed about pedagogy than members of the school board some of whom have been serving the school district for nearly a decade? That is truly interesting. Please continue.

I’m glad I look at these forums sometimes. This has been one of the most fascinating school threads ever. I hope you can urge others to read the entire thing – a lot of high quality input.

watcher,

Skelly is still around, you seem to have access to the Principal, and you could also have the Weekly do the public records search.

Instead of keeping this on the hush hush, why are you not doing something about it?

Edmund Burke,

Last question, I suppose this is for the merged classes this year – the one we were not aware of.

” by offering the same rigorous curriculum of 9A to the disabled and minority students clustered in english 9 they raised their performance. As if by magic the number of Ds and Fs being received by those students fell. “

So, the D’s and F’s it had nothing to do with the stigma of being in 9?

And if everyone was still supposedly “clustered” this year, how did differentiation actually work?

no name-

She wasn’t expelled. Her attorney had her withdraw from Paly & enroll at a private school. She’ll reapply for other colleges from her new school. Maybe the new schools to which she applies won’t check deeply into her Paly records? Lesson she’s learned is that if she gets caught doing something wrong, her parents will get a lawyer to protect her from consequences. Terrific value system in that family.

watcher,

While our individual parent requests often go unanswered, the Weekly sending a question will get an answer. It seems your question and that of Former Paly parent helped.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2014/02/21/students-transcript-change-sparks-probe