School System Reform
We propose to restructure the school system to allow tracking after the tenth grade, to increase educational attainment expectations, to move to a program of regular testing of students, including a form of graduation exam, to implement site-based management and to institute a pay-for-performance plan for teachers.
Background
The St. Louis School District is not producing graduates with the skills needed to function in the economy. Nationally, the average SAT score for students in the 1989-90 school year was 900. The average in the St. Louis School District was 783. The average ACT score nationally was 20.6. In St. Louis, the average score was 17.6. 51% of the St.Louis students who entered the ninth grade four years ago dropped out by 1991. This lack of achievement follows students into the workplace.
In a survey by Confluence of St. Louis of Members of AAIM Management Association, employers said they were forced to screen seven or more applicants to find one qualified candidate for entry-level jobs…. Nearly 80% of the employers said skills required for entry-level jobs had increased in the last five to 10 years. About half of the employers said applicants did not have the basic skills to do the job. And they expressed less faith in recent high school graduates than in other kinds of workers.21St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 3, 1991
Two school-based factors affect this problem. One is structural: the school system is only designed for those children who wish to go to college. The other is a question of expectations: we simply do not ask students to learn enough.
The State Legislature of Oregon also confronted these problems recently:
Unfortunately our academic and technical skill levels are not adequate to compete in an international economy. Other nations produce a highly technical work force by providing workers with strong general educations. Each nation sets performance standards which virtually all students must meet at about the age of 16 and which have a direct effect on their employment prospects. Each nation has developed high performance work organizations that replace the mass production techniques of the early twentieth century. In contrast, the United States is the only major country in the world that does not have a well-defined and implemented school-to-work transition. Students consistently perform at or near the bottom on tests when compared to other nations. Nearly three out of ten student beginning first grade will not graduate from high school. Yet these students will make up more than a third of our front-line force. The most neglected students are the 70% of high school students who will not go on to college, only a fraction of whom are prepared for work. As a result, the vast majority of students who do not go to college are left to sink or swim, lacking academic and vocational skills, usually jumping from one low paying job to another until their mid-twenties—never being seriously trained for any meaningful occupation.22Information provided by Oregon House of Representatives
The Oregon Legislature recently passed a sweeping educational reform bill in response to this situation. The bill will drastically raise educational standards, institute a tracking system for students after the tenth grade, and mandate the equivalent of graduation exams for each of the tracks. A description follows.
Essential to the restructuring process is the raising of expectations and the establishment of rigorous educational standards that all students must meet. The bill creates the Certificate of initial Mastery and the Certificate of Advanced Mastery, both of which will serve as new standards of educational achievement. Over time these standards will be raised, so that Oregon students will be the best educated in the nation by the year 2000 and equal to any in the world by the year 2010.
The Certificate of Initial Mastery, which most students will achieve at the tenth grade, will require that schools ensure that students master fundamental literacy, math, science, reasoning, critical thinking and communication skills, as well as know how to work effectively alone and as part of a group. Students also will be expected to demonstrate knowledge of social studies, foreign languages, humanities, visual, performing and literary arts, advanced mathematics and sciences.
To insure that students are making steady progress toward obtaining the Certificate of Initial Mastery, the bill implements a series of on-going performance based assessments at grades 3, 5, 8 and 10. In addition to "tests" as we know them today, students will be evaluated on "authentic" assessments that measure student mastery and progress with the use of work samples, projects, exhibits and portfolios. The assessments will provide the information needed to develop strategies to ensure that all students succeed.
After obtaining the Certificate of Initial Mastery, students will have the opportunity to expand their educational options by obtaining a Certificate of Advanced Mastery with college preparatory or academic professional technical endorsements or both. The requirements for a Certificate of Advanced Mastery (equivalent to a high school diploma) will facilitate the movement between endorsements, encourage choice and mobility to enhance a student's opportunities for exposure to a full range of educational experiences. Students will not be forced into choosing between rigid educational "tracks" as critics contend; instead the built-in flexibility in the system will permit junior and senior students to move back and forth between options, with both paths leading towards college, the workplace or a combination of the two.23Ibid.
Next: Tracking