THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504210219
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Long : 178 lines
Recent articles have emphasized increased student dropout rates and programs for at-risk students.
I am a retired teacher from Virginia Beach City Public Schools. For over 30 years, I taught mathematics. Since my retirement from Kempsville High School, I have taught Algebra 1 and Consumer Mathematics part-time at Open Campus High School, an afternoon/evening high school for older high school students and adults.
Each year I announce that I am finally going to retire from teaching only to be lured back to Open Campus by the teachers, staff and administrators who work as a team to help students succeed. Students, prior to attending Open Campus, have experienced little success due to factors in school and/or home, often beyond the control of the student. High-school-aged students are generally admitted to Open Campus for health, family, financial or academic reasons. Students range in age from 17 to 54.
Open Campus High School has been identified as a model high school for adults and/or alternative (or at-risk) students who have dropped out or are about to drop out of school. School divisions from throughout Virginia have come to view the program. Norfolk public-school system has proposed a school modeled after Open Campus High School in its 1995-96 budget. Adults who are not dropouts but who have diplomas also attend Open Campus to take additional upper-level courses for college admission. Adults with GEDs attend because they find they need a diploma.
The academic rigor of Open Campus is the same as in regular high school. Course content is accelerated. Courses are taught in a block schedule. The school graduates over 200 students a year now.
Several years ago, the School Board and school administration promised to expand Open Campus to a day program. It opened as an afternoon/evening high school six years ago only because of a lack of day facilities. A large number of students and adults could be served currently by a daytime Open Campus, but no permanent home has been given to Open Campus High School, although a day program was approved by the School Board in 1991. Though the board voted in 1990 that Thalia Center for Pregnant Students was to be added to Open Campus, that has never been done.
If Virginia Beach desires to be a model school division, perhaps it should look in its own back yard and find what other school divisions have: a model school. After you recognize the school, perhaps you should give it a home so that it can continue to serve more students and adults and help them to suc-ceed.
Most students, all teachers, staff and administrators come to the school with a commitment to alternative and adult education and to student success. Morale is the highest that I have ever witnessed from teachers and staff.
Dominick DeSarro
Summerset Lane At-risk students shouldn't be taught with gifted kids
This is in support of the views expressed in ``Magnet middle school for at-risk kids'' by Nancy S. Jacobs (Kaleidoscope, Beacon, April 2).
For years the educational establishment has tried to convince us that students with different levels of achievement can be mixed in a single class and that the teacher can successfully challenge all of them. They usually add that it would be necessary, of course, to support such a teacher with additional training or additional help in the classroom. Most will admit that the teacher will have to spend additional time with those whose progress is not up to the level necessary to master the material. It should be obvious that this means that advanced students will not receive a proper challenge.
Every child should be encouraged to learn as much as he or she can, but our system puts obstacles in the way of those who do well, as explained by Ms. Jacobs. At the other extreme, students who are behind are promoted anyway and face a challenge beyond their capabilities. Bored or lost, both classes of students tend to become discipline problems.
It is true that we have ``advanced'' classes but, as Ms. Jacobs shows, this often leaves such students with nowhere to go. They must repeat courses already taken. Poorer students take ``remedial'' courses which allow them to receive credit for inferior work and usually leaves them farther behind.
Both groups would be better served if grouped with students who would find the course to be taken equally challenging. Each student would be in a class that was challenging but not beyond his/her ability if willing to work hard. None would feel inferior to other students and the competition between students of equal ability would probably cause all students to do their best. Under the present system some students feel inferior and sometimes they try to intimidate more successful students, referring to them as ``nerds.'' In addition, teachers would be able to prepare only one level of instruction.
We need a system which will allow students to progress according to achievement. Students having trouble should not be promoted, or given ``busy work'' in ``remedial'' classes or required to repeat the failed course. They must be taught the same material but with a different method of teaching.
If we continue to handicap the better students so that they won't get too far ahead of those who are not working as hard, we send the wrong message and adversely affect our ability to compete in the world market.
Edward G. Kreyling Jr.
South Sea Breeze Trail Mr. Kreyling formerly served on the Virginia Beach School Board. Why was reading program eliminated? Helping students learn is as important as what they learn
For six years I have been involved in Virginia's Reading to Learn Program. Its purpose has been to work, through six universities in Virginia, with teachers to help them to be more effective at teaching their course content while helping students learn to improve their reading, writing, thinking and study skills.
The successes I have had in the classroom are countless. I have seen student after student come, for the first time, to the realization that she/he can be successful academically. I have also seen countless advanced students realize that there is more to learning than being able to repeat what the teacher has said on a test paper.
I have seen these things in all the grades. Yet the Reading to Learn Program was eliminated in the budget recently passed by our state legislature. I question the wisdom of this.
In the proposed Standards of Learning Objectives, and the Allen administration's education policy stressing content over process in Virginia's classrooms, it appears to me that we risk making too dramatic a swing in one direction. For many of Virginia's students, at all grade levels and abilities, content is either not attainable without instruction in how to learn (i.e., make connections between prior knowledge and new material), or meaningless without the ability to process it or apply it. This was a central theme in the book Cultural Literacy, What Every American Needs to Know, by E.D. Hirsch Jr.
Second, teaching the reading process is quite closely related to teaching the learning process. Humans can learn new content when they are able to make connections with their prior experiences, derive meaning from the content and reflect on how it might apply in the real world. Few would question the need to be well informed as to the relevant facts which constitute American and world cultural background. But Hirsch himself says, ``The polarization of educationists into facts-people versus skills-people has no basis in reason. Facts and skills are inseparable. There is no insurmountable reason why those who advocate the teaching of higher order skills and those who advocate the teaching of common traditional content should not join forces. No philosophical or practical barrier prevents them from doing so, and all who consider mature literacy to be a paramount aim of education will wish them to do so.''
Third, much recent research points to the need for literacy and problem solving skills as a prerequisite for most employment opportunities in the future. When the vice president of Toyota U.S.A spoke in Norfolk recently, he said that they were turning down two of three American job applicants because they could not read or problem solve. The latest ``Reading Report Card'' points out that more than 60 percent of America's 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds cannot read with ``proficiency.''
If we in education are contemplating going into the business of sorting and selecting those students who should succeed, and then providing the course content that only those select few will need for success, perhaps we ought to think twice. Not only does America's future depend on our having a literate work force and a literate electorate but we ought also to consider the potential costs of building more prisons and other means of controlling those others for whom we elect not to provide the learning ``process.''
Hopefully, the statewide hearings on the proposed SOLs will help the State Department make better-informed decisions regarding such drastic changes in those guidelines for teachers. With regard to the elimination of funding for the Virginia Reading To Learn Project, our representatives in Richmond are either ``penny-wise/pound-foolish,'' or just plain foolish.
Mark A. Forget
Virginia Beach Rising appraisals contradict assessment of `low tax' community
With the notice in the media of a contemplated 4.8-cents increase in real property taxes we have Management and Budget Director E. Dean Block reminding us that we are still a ``low tax'' community. Possibly the ``E'' in Mr. Block's first name stands for ethereal or he has not kept pace with the times. Along with this notice comes an increase in real property appraisals and although the city assessor tells us the average increase was only about 1.7 percent my increase was 5.2 percent and another member of my family had an increase of her property of 5.3 percent. It was interesting to note my increase was for structures while hers was for her lot. When you add the increase and appraisal together you get a 10 percent increase which represents a 357 percent of change increase above the annual national inflation rate.
A review of my appraisals for the last 20 years shows a total property increase of 212.24 percent for an average annual increase of 10.61 percent. Hardly minimal increases and certainly never ending tax increases. Possibly this city should seize the opportunity to follow the new national example and look to living within its means. How many disabled, retired and other citizens do we have in this community who feel we pay enough in taxes? Possibly we need less $50,000 flag poles, land speculation and amphitheaters. There are some of us that might say to hell with art - we like to eat.
C.W. Carr
Bunker Hill Lane by CNB