ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS RIP REGENTS TEST

By Deidre McFadyen, The Chief-Leader, Friday, Feb. 11, 2000, p. 4, 10.

State Education Commissioner Richard C. Mill's recent decision not to exempt a group of alternative high schools from Regents graduation requirements has ignited a sharp debate about the merits of measuring student achievement based on a battery of standardized tests.

“There is no disagreement about standards,” said Ann Cook, co-director of the 150-student Urban Academy in Manhattan. “Our students meet and exceed the state standards. This is about high-stakes tests and whether there is only one way of doing things.”

`Why Fix What Works?'

“These schools work,” she remarked with consternation. “One of the puzzlements we have is: why fix things that aren't broken?”

Educators from the 38 schools worry that they will be forced to abandon their innovative curriculum that is based on hands-on learning, independent research and constant revision and rewriting.

Describing the Regents curriculum as formulaic and rigid, they charge that it turns many students off learning and doesn't prepare them adequately for college level work. In the drive to cover al the required material, they add, subjects like art and music get squeezed out.

“It is going to break my heart to teach to those Regents,” said Josh Thomases, a history Teacher at El Puente Academy for Peace & Justice in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. “It will hurt each and every day to know that my students are bored and I am bored.”

About 400 Teachers turned our for a Jan. 31 demonstration outside Governor Pataki's Manhattan office. Reflecting the level of commitment to their schools, the protesters represented roughly half the staff from the 33 city schools affected by Commissioner Mills's decision.

In 1995, Mr. Mills's predecessor, Thomas Sobol, granted a waiver to a group of alternative high schools called the New York Performance Consortium, essentially freeing them from the graduation requirements demanded of students in regular public high schools.

Stiffer Standards

Mr. Mills, a staunch advocate of statewide standards, is phasing in rigorous Regents exams in core subjects to replace the easier competency exams that students previously needed to pass in order to get a high school diploma. Staring this year, Grade 12 students must pass the English Regents exam to graduate.

Mr. Mills Jan. 26 granted a one-year extension of the waiver to the 16 schools that were part of the original consortium. He said that the remaining 22 schools, which joined later, would get no special treatment unless they could demonstrate to him that they met the same criteria as the other schools.

Offering a ray of hope, Mr. Mills said that he would conduct a one-year evaluation the schools before rendering his final decision about the alternative graduation assessments.

A decision against the consortium would represent a virtual death knell, the educators say. “The face of alternative education would change greatly,” said Amy McLeod, an English Teacher at the 800-student Beacon School in Manhattan. “This innovative learning wouldn't happen anymore because we wouldn't be able to devote the attention to both.”

The United Federation of Teachers, while supportive of the Teachers, has assumed a low profile on the issue. UFT President Randi Weingarten said that the union was disappointed by the ruling. "Other assessments should be available if they are equally as rigorous as the Regents,” she said.

Asked if she was convinced that all of the schools passed muster in that regard, she replied, “At least some of them do and they have a right to have a shot at proving it.”

Ms. Weingarten said that the immediate task was ensuring that the State Education department does an objective evaluation. “We have to make sure that there is a level playing field so they get a fair shake,” she said.

The alternative high schools are an offshoot of the small schools movement that blossomed in the city five or six years ago. Some of the schools are part of the City's Alternative High School division, while others were put in the regular borough superintendencies.

Pegged to Curriculum

The schools share a commitment to a system of assessment that is not based on tests, but is instead embedded in the curriculum itself. Students create in-depth portfolios that include oral and written work that they must present to both in-house and outside committees at the end of the year.

“Everything we do on a daily basis plays into how the students are finally assessed,” said Ms. McLeod.

These high schools, which get the same per-capita operating aid as mainstream schools, tend to attract kids who are alienated form conventional schools; no child is automatically assigned to them. The schools have open admission and do not hold entrance exams.

Teachers work collaboratively to forge connections between different disciplines. For instance, at the Beacon School, students studied the Vietnam War in their social studies class and read the short stories of Time O'Brien, a Vietnam veteran, in the English class.

Maria Hantzopoulos teaches courses on African history and revolutions in the Caribbean at Humanities Preparation Academy in Manhattan. Her students participate in debates, create projects, and write in-depth research papers on those themes.

Ms Hantzopoulos contend that she would have to lecture every day in class to each student the litany of facts that they would need to know to pass the global studies Regents. “The Regents demand rote learning of materials that have to be regurgitated and probably not remembered after take the test,” she said.

Mr. Thomases, the Teacher at El Puente, said that he currently devotes the final five weeks of his American history class to drilling his students on the 50 terms that they need to know to pass the history competency test.

No such finesse will be possible with the Regents exams, he said. The global studies Regents, he said, demands that Teacher cover 60 separate topics over two years. The kids will have to gallop through the curriculum, spending one week on Ancient Rome and the next on religions of the world, he said.

“There will not be time in class to discuss the meaning and significance of facts, because you will have to spend all your time memorizing facts,” he remarked.

`Just Hoops'

In the end, he said, the students will lose out. “They still will not have learned what they actually need to know; they will only have learned to jump through the hoop,” he said.

Ms. McLeod said that the Teachers also thrive on the enriched and more flexible curriculum. She contended that the UFT's mantra about the exodus of Teachers to more lucrative jobs in the suburbs simply did not apply to the alternative schools. In fact, she said, many of her colleagues left suburban schools in order to teach at Beacon.

The educators at alternative schools noted that their students are better equipped for college work then students from mainstream schools.

Ms. Cook said that 95 percent of her school's students go on to college each year. By the end of Grade 12, she said, her student can write essays, present evident, and do independent research – all skills that they need to succeed in college.

It was a “big leap,” she went on, to assume that the students who pass the Regents exams are ready to meet the challenges of higher education. “What evidence do we have that a Regents curriculum is producing well-educated youngsters?” she asked.

Ms Cook said that alternative schools seven as incubators of new ideas and approaches that can be adopted systemwide if they prove successful. Form a research perspective, Ms. Cook said, innovation and diversity in school system are essential. “You never want to set up a situation where everyone is doing the same thing,” she said.