preparing students for RIGOROUS standards

Leadership, Nov, 2000 by David W. Gordon

Some critics said this district was setting the bar too high, but students responded well to the challenge. Now, those students are well positioned to succeed on the High School Exit Exam, even in math.

Today's students -- and parents -- often ask us, "Why the pressure for higher standards and more school work?" And our answer is, "The competition for good jobs and opportunities is far tougher than it was 30 years ago as U.S. companies clamor to import workers from other countries because our young people often cannot do the jobs available."

But beyond expecting strong performance in basic skills, our district places a strong focus on the other areas that are key to enriching students' lives into adulthood -- an understanding of civic values and the importance of giving back to the community through service; and a renewed emphasis on the arts, science, and social science so that these areas are not lost in our rush to improve performance in basic skills.

In Elk Grove we teach these skills and values to more students every year. Covering one-third of Sacramento County, our district is growing rapidly in both the number of students and the diversity of our families. We have 47,000 students this year and expect to grow to 80,000 within 10 years. We will need to build up to 39 new schools to handle that growth. And with nearly equal numbers of Latino, African American and Asian students, minorities represent more than 60 percent of our students, and one in five students is an English Language Learner. Our ELL students speak more than 70 languages and dialects.

Geometry now a graduation requirement

We are fortunate in Elk Grove to have an outstanding Board of Education, and a decade ago they had the foresight to make algebra a graduation requirement. While many people thought we were setting the bar too high, our board believed that students are far better off when they are challenged. The fact is that our students responded to these challenges and not one student has failed to graduate because of this requirement.

In fact, requiring algebra led to an increase in the number of students enrolling in geometry, and now more than 90 percent of our graduates pass geometry. That is one reason why our board felt confident in adopting geometry as a graduation requirement last January, beginning with the class of 2004. This recommendation was crafted by separate community and teacher advisory committees. And while geometry currently accounts for only a small portion of the High School Exit Exam, we believe that this new requirement will help prepare students to pass the exit exam by encouraging them to take algebra as early as possible and by emphasizing the importance of learning high-level math skills.

Our efforts to help students pass geometry mirror our efforts to help every student pass the High School Exit Exam. They include attracting qualified math teachers; teaching to our highest standards at all grade levels, including elementary and middle; and providing specialized training to staff on helping students master these requirements.

Staff training for the HSEE started in April with principals and vice principals, and continued through the summer with math and language arts teachers. The training lets teachers know which skills the exit exam will cover, and which materials teach those skills. And since students need to know far more than just what is on the exit exam, the training also emphasized the need to continue to teach to all of the state standards.

When increasing math requirements in high school, it is critical to upgrade the math curriculum in elementary and middle schools to prepare students to be successful. We updated our own district math and language arts standards at all grade levels to match the new state standards last year, and we have provided many hours of training on those standards. We also mail the standards to every parent so that they can track their child's progress.

Our teachers also review student test scores from the previous year so that their lesson plans can take into account their students' strengths and weaknesses.

While we have updated our standards, we are still waiting for new math textbooks in 2001 that will fully align with state standards. But we know we would be doing our students a disservice if we waited two years for new textbooks to be written and published.

After updating our district standards to align to the state's, our curriculum department reviewed our textbooks to see how well they matched the state standards. At some grade levels the match was less than 60 percent. To correct this problem, we created supplemental binders of materials aligned to the new standards for teachers that augmented our existing textbooks.

And this year we went a step further. We piloted several interim textbooks and, based on teachers' feedback, we purchased Math Steps, a K-6 workbook that does an even better job of supplementing our textbooks to cover all of the math standards. The series was selected based on extensive focus groups with teachers.