Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406080063
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
Attendance is up and the dropout rate is down, he told the PTA. ``That's what you want.''
Representatives of 65 schools visited Pulaski during the 1993-94 academic year to study the switch from a seven-period day to four 90-minute periods.
``There are 24 schools that we know for sure are switching to a 4/4 because of Pulaski County High School,'' DeBolt said.
He said the longer and more intensive classes have allowed students to catch up or accelerate their learning, so fewer were discouraged during the year. Teachers and students had more time to get to know one another and worked better together in learning.
``There's kind of a chemistry there. There's a rapport,'' he said. ``We're seeing more evidence of that in the school.''
The longer classes, which change each semester, have probably even helped improve behavior, he said. When 1,600 students go bumping through hallways to change classes only four times a day instead of seven, he said, it makes for better class concentration and less opportunity for mischief.
``We're down more than one-third in what I call hard-core transgressions,'' DeBolt said.
``We're up about 18 percent in A's and B's, and down about 18 percent in D's and F's,'' he said, and not because classes are easier. The school raised its graduation requirements more than a year ago.
The dropout rate has been cut from 8.7 percent three years ago to below 5 percent, he said, and he hoped this year's rate would be even lower. Attendance may end up being 1 percent better this year, although DeBolt said he's worried about the last two weeks of the school year when students tend to skip days. ``It's going to take a Herculean effort to keep the lamp of learning burning all the way through to the end.''
But attendance is still higher than ever in the school's history he said, now consistently over 94 percent instead of the 91 percent of recent years. ``My dream is over 96 percent,'' he said.
Student test scores also have gone up slightly, he said.
``When you mix all that around, what we think we're starting to see is a better-educated Cougar,'' DeBolt said.
Although he realized PTA officials would like to see meetings better attended, he said, the year has seen parental involvement in the number of calls made to the Cougar Information Network on which teachers leave recorded messages about what was done in that day's class and assignments for the next day.
He said calls to the information network never dropped below 250 a night and at times went over 600.
Recent surveys did show ``an overwhelming majority'' in favor of keeping the four classes per semester, he said. ``It's not absolutely everybody,'' he added, but he believed the increased staff development training sessions planned for this summer will help those still preferring seven periods adapt to the new system.
DeBolt said he realized the emphasis on keeping students in class has affected extracurricular activities to some extent. ``Some people call me Simon Legree. I know that,'' he said, referring to the slave master in ``Uncle Tom's Cabin.'' ``We're pretty much focused on instruction.''
The school still has areas where improvements are needed, he said, such as making the science deparment more high-tech.
With support from the School Board, he said, ``we're putting together a model which we hope to begin implementing next year'' to bring state-of-the-art computers on line. Science education can be improved through more modern computers ``and that's where we want to get. If you want to see an example of it, walk over to our Governor's School,'' he said.
The two schools, both located on the same property, have worked out a way to link the Governor's School computer software to the high school.
DeBolt said more female students need to be attracted to technical fields, and some progress is being made in that direction.
He said grades in some honors courses will be less weighted in the coming years, following recommendations by a committee studying the weights for the last year and a half.
``What we're seeing is some bright kids on coast, and achieving honor role status with a bunch of C's,'' he said, because they are weighted so they become B's.
Weighted grades will be kept in the really tough accelerated courses, he said, but some of the earlier high school classes probably should not have been weighted in the first place. Students will find it harder to achieve honor role status, he said, and the committee recommendations were not arrived at lightly.
by CNB