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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Plan To Take Away Electives Cut Back

By Andrea Schoellkopf
Journal Staff Writer
       A plan to strip high school students of elective classes if they are not proficient in reading or math has been scaled back in Albuquerque to impact only the lowest-performing ninth-graders.
    Starting next month, Albuquerque Public Schools' lowest performing in the spring Standards Based Assessment in the eighth grade will need to take remedial math and or reading classes as freshmen.
    "This is the biggest complaint we get from the content teachers in high school," state Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia said. "Kids cannot be successful in history or science because they can't read the textbook."
    APS tentatively has identified 1,461 out of 5,500 incoming freshmen who will need the remedial math classes, associate superintendent Eddie Soto said. It has identified 700 for the literacy intervention class, but does not have the numbers yet for the Read 180 program required for the lowest-scoring students.
    "Students need to take this very seriously," Soto said. "... We do have that quartile of students who are just not performing. We have to zero in on them."
    When principals first heard about the plan in February, many — particularly in low-performing schools like Rio Grande and West Mesa — had feared they would have to downsize their elective departments and hire more reading and math specialists.
    Those two schools, and several others, have since implemented a new eight-period block schedule starting next month so their low-performing students may still take electives. Others who are on a block schedule include Highland, Cibola, Volcano Vista, and the new Atrisco Heritage Academy. The rest of the high schools in the district are expected to switch to the block schedule next year, Soto said.
    Many APS middle schools already had implemented the classes and the Read 180 program last year.
    APS has used an in-house test, Assess 2 Learn, to identify students who need the classes. That could change, however, when the results of the Standards Based Assessment come out next month before school starts.
    And regular Albuquerque classroom teachers will be expected to bring up students who are "nearing proficiency," Soto said.
    While the state intent was for districts to address all students not testing at proficiency, the APS plan meets with approval by the state.
    "The requirement for the district is to provide some remediation to the students who have not made proficiency after eighth grade," Garcia said. "How (a) district chooses to do that has to be different in every district."
    But there are still freshmen who potentially could not take any electives at all.
    At Rio Grande, for instance, some 120 freshmen are enrolled in the daily Read 180 program, a 90-minute intensive literacy class by the Scholastic publishing company that targets high school and middle school students that essentially takes up two class periods. If they are also in the remedial math program, then the 180 Reading will serve as the elective class because it is daily.