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Failing students get boost on 2d try: Enrichment is goal for the 'freshmore'

Ohanian Comment: I want to know why all students need to "thoughtfully dissect Shakespeare" and take Algebra. Why can't we change the curriculum for students who are not thriving in a traditional curriculum? The real reason for this class is to raise the MCAS pass rate. Who's kidding whom? And what are the chances of a young person held back a year staying around long enough to get a diploma?

By Tracy Jan

The students call themselves sophmen and freshmores.

They try to grasp the ninth-grade algebra they failed last year while their teacher slowly weaves in concepts from 10th-grade geometry.

Clustered in tiny English classes, students who struggled with reading during their freshman year thoughtfully dissect Shakespeare and the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.

These 15- and 16-year-olds, students of Another Course to College, a Boston public high school, are a new breed of students in the city. They have been placed in a special transitional year between ninth and tenth grade because they flunked freshman math or English.

Boston's 38 public high schools are redesigning traditional schooling to allow struggling students to graduate at a slower pace. In 2005, Thomas W. Payzant, then Boston's superintendent of schools, led the drive to stop promotion of failing students simply because they were a year older. Students can now take five years if they need to.

"Even though I'm partially a freshman, I'm mostly like a sophomore," said Kenny Chan, 16, a student at Another Course to College, which is in Brighton. "Basically, we're both. We're like in our own parallel world. In my way of saying it, I'm a sophman."

The idea behind what educators call the sub-10th grade was to remove the stigma of failing and to require students to repeat only the courses they failed, rather than the entire year. The students also get a pass on taking the MCAS their second year of high school, because they're not full-fledged sophomores.

"Headmasters have to think differently, creatively," said Superintendent Michael G. Contompasis, who has supported Payzant's desire to do more with failing freshmen. "I just hope the decision is made with the best interests of the students in mind, as opposed to trying to boost your MCAS results."

In at least a half-dozen Boston high schools, the number of sophomores taking the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests has dropped by as much as 50 percent since 2004, while the schools' scores in English and math have improved, according to a Globe analysis.

"If a kid fails ninth-grade math and English, the child is not prepared to move on, so why would we pass them?" said Jose Duarte, English High's headmaster. "The MCAS has made us more mindful of it. I am absolutely more careful of who I'm promoting."

The state allows students to skip the MCAS during their second year of high school if they are on a five-year plan. Provided they have passed freshman math and English, the students must take the tests in their third year.

Most high schools allow students to move onto sophomore courses in social studies and science, while making them repeat ninth-grade math or English, the MCAS subjects that Massachusetts students must pass to graduate. Others move students along in an accelerated version of the freshman- level classes.

Although headmasters recognize the value of giving students an extra year to focus on deficiencies, headmasters do not want the added schooling to discourage them.

"Kids look at high school like prison; I put in two years time, you have to call me a junior now," said John Leonard, headmaster of the Edward G. Noonan Business Academy in Dorchester. "Payzant was trying to make it possible for kids to stay in high school five years and not feel bad about it."

Students at Another Course to College expressed mixed opinions about the extra year.

Donnie Bracero, 16, said he would prefer to repeat his freshmen year with a new crop of ninth graders, rather than attend a transitional class, because he is afraid that other students might mistake him for a special education student.

Tzigane West, 16, a freshmore at Another Course to College, credits the extra year with helping him to learn to enjoy reading.

"In the beginning, I was kind of disappointed, because I'd be with all my friends if I did better last year," said West, 16. "But in actuality, we're learning some new things, like analytical thinking in English."

Another Course to College implemented its program three years ago, after nearly half of its freshmen failed English and math courses, said Gerald Howland, the school's headmaster. This year, 10 students, or 20 percent of last year's freshmen class, went into the transition year, which Howland calls "the 9.5 year."

Howland hopes that all 10 will make it to 10th grade after the extra year, which includes close monitoring by teachers and class size as small as five students.

One sign of the program's success: Previous sophmen who moved to the 10th grade all passed the MCAS on their first try, he said.

The smaller classes allow teachers to more easily detect students who are having trouble and who might feel intimidated or embarrassed to ask for help in regular classes, which in the city's high schools can be as large as 31 students.

In a recent class, Deborah Arnous, an English teacher at Another Course to College, had her five students take turns reading aloud a chapter from Douglass's autobiography. Then she peppered them with questions, to make sure they understood what Douglass wrote about slaves who were beaten for learning how to read.

"What's happening?," she asked. "How does that correlate to the previous chapter? Elaborate on that. Why?"

Arnous corrected students' mispronunciations as they read. When one boy stopped focusing on the book and started pestering a classmate, Arnous slipped into a seat next to him and motioned for him to turn to the right page.

"I've got to rein them in and be very patient," Arnous said later. "If I keep them on task, they're going to enjoy this stuff, and I keep them engaged in intellectual discourse."

Howland said he feels that some of his retained students could pass the MCAS this year, but that with an extra year of math and English, they could score at top levels. Such students are eligible for the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship, which rewards the top quarter of MCAS scorers in each school system with free tuition for four years at any public college or university in the state.

"We have to convince kids that an extra year is a good thing," Howland said. "But if it's an extra year of the same thing, then it's a killer intellectually. Here, they're doing something different, and it's not so demoralizing."



— Tracy Jan
Boston Globe
2007-05-27


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