In yet another step backward for the children of Santa Ana, the “Santa Ana Unified trustees on Tuesday discussed a plan to lower high school graduation requirements as a way to boost the number of students who earn diplomas each year,” according to the O.C. Register.
This ridiculous plan will reduce the number of credits needed to graduate from Santa Ana high schools to 220, from 240. The board decided in 2001 to increase the credits to their current level. And now they want to go backwards.
“We are not having a conversation about lowering expectations for students,” said Superintendent Jane Russo.
This is just an attempt to increase graduation rates by dumbing our kids down further. I hope that those of you who voted for Trustees Rob Richardson and Jose Hernandez, not to mention Roman Reyna, are happy now.
The only Trustee who is publicly opposed to this scheme is John Palacio, who coincidentally is the only decent Trustee on the SAUSD School Board.
Oh please, let’s be real here. Why in the hell were the grad requirements at 240 credits in the first place? Irvine USD requires 215. It was one of those crazy attempts to show that we are requiring more of our students when in fact, requiring more of students with less abilities and resources than their more wealthy and educated counterparts only makes our students look even less prepared. Please see through this ridiculous argument, we were dooming these kids to failure by expecting more of them than any other district. It is really important to acknowledge the real reason for this. It has absolutely nothing to do with dumbing down anything. It’s MONEY. Stop and think. Does it cost more to require more units? Of course it does. Can you hire fewer teachers if the students don’t need as many credits to graduate? Of course you can. Everything revolves around money. Do not even pretend otherwise. These kids will still have to pass the CAHSEE and they will still need to meet the requirements of the state for graduation. Why doom them to failure by requiring 25 more units than Irvine?
anon teacher,
Well said.
Sorry, I meant to say that we were expecting more of them THAN any other district. My little ones came in the room and before their little hands got on the computer I had to push “submit” but I hope I got my point across.
At this point, we need to do anything and everything we can to help our children succeed. If pairing our graduation requirments to those of other districts will help motivate them to do better instead of stressing over an additional 20 credits, then I say let’s go for it. Anything is worth a try then to simply continue with the failing system currently in place!
Anon, nice try…
Your excuse is almost as bad as the old “the dog ate my homework”…
Please
Anon Teacher ” #1 ”
You shouldn’t be an educator i hope you get laid
off or force to retire
NO JOKE…
You should expect more from students,
I will say that reading the OC Register headline earlier today I was dissapointed however after reading the whole story I was dissapointed that these higher standards placed on S.A. students was not dropped earlier.
What were those school board members thinking back in 2001?
There has to be some reason that they decided to do this?
Why didn’t any school board candidate or any other person concerned with schools in Santa Ana not address this issue till after 7 years of this apparently failing policy?
SAHS Teacher and Jose,
Didn’t Richardson and Noji vote for this back in 2001? If this deal is so bad, it should have been a campaign issue last year.
And of course the teachers union endorsed Richardson last year…and his equally lame partner in crime, Jose Hernandez.
To me, this is a slippery slope. They will stop at nothing to artificially improve graduation rates.
They are putting an unrealistic goal on the Students of the Santa Ana High Schools. I am sorry I agree with anon #1. My daughter goes to Mater Dei and her college worksheet says right on it graduation requirement are 235 credits I think that is even excessive. That is less than SAUSD credits currently required and this is a college prep high school. I do not think its off base to lower the requirement.
Neither Noji nor Richardson were on the Board of Ed in 2001. This is the result of Palacio and Nativo Lopez, both of whom championed this without input from teachers.
Also, remember, our current students have far more pressure on them with needing to pass the Exit Exam and with all of the No Child Left Behind testing. They still have all these hoops to jump through which did not exist in 2001.
The 220 would be the MINIMUM graduating credits. Many of our students will graduate with more than that. As a high school teacher in Santa Ana, we need to lower the credits NOW- the kids will only benefit if we alleviate some stress.
The number of units earned is not necessarily indicative of the education received. Anywhere.
Anon #1 is right on the money. Fitting every student into the same A-G requirement mold does not ensure success and instead often has the result of discouraging those who do not excel academically from being involved in the electives that keep them interested in school. Lowering the number of required credits does NOT mean lowering the expectations for our students to achieve the required state standards in English, math, social science, or science- it gives more room to focus on those key subjects and find skills in other realms. If a student under the current system needs remediation and has to take a special reading or math class, those classes take up room in their schedule that could otherwise be used to encourage a different type of intelligence the student may possess, like art, music, shop, or athletics. Further, more requirements do not equal better students, otherwise we would have a higher graduation rate and number of college bound students than schools with lower credit requirements like University HS, Troy HS, or Oxford Academy, the top three high schools in the county. We need to look at what the majority of our students need, which is remediation and differentiation, and address those things. Those students who are college bound are going to achieve the extra units and A-G requirements, regardless of the number of credits required to graduate.
Art -
You’re absolutely right about Noji & Richardson putting their full force behind the current grad requirements. In fact, Noji refused to send her son to a SAUSD school and shipped him off to a high school in Irvine.
Noji, like bad fish, has overstayed her time on the school board. She’s clocking in nearly two decades by the time her current term is up. It’s time to toss out one of the bad fish stinking up the SAUSD district.
When is the community going to get serious about ward specific elections for the school board?????
“From 1995 to 2001 Ms. Russo was area administrator for SAUSD where she supervised 12 principals in all aspects of K-12 education and operations”
http://www.sausd.k12.ca.us/14431028131613703/blank/browse.asp?A=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=53992
Was Superintendent Russo for or against raising the requirement to 240 while she was a high ranking administrator back in 2001, or is she in favor of lowering the bar now in the interest of cutting cost?
Russo is hopeing they will lover the requirements for an Ed.D. so she can get the requirements to be a Superintendent.
I guess I will choose to ignore some of the more ridiculous posts like #6. Please listen to the high school teachers who are posting here. I am not one, but they understand the issue and are explaining it very clearly I think. Yes, it involves money but it also makes sense. I think the original intent of requiring SA students to take this many units was to prove that we have high expectations for our students in one of the only ways possible. It isn’t working and needs to be changed.
Russo was released by SAUSD. I don’t know the circumstances surrounding her release, however she did ignore the antics of Tony Espinosa for several years. And we all know Espinosa contributed significantly to the academic decline of Valley HS and was protected by Mijares. And it was Audrey Noji that single-handly recruited Russo to return to SAUSD with the promise of replacing Mijares.
Nearly two decades on any school board is too long. It’s time for Noji to move on. Hanging on does not serve the best needs of the students or the community.
Dump Noji in 2009!
Good Riddance Russo!
This extra helping of classes in the SA school district seems to be another bad idea. Take a clue from neighbor district, Irvine, and make high school reasonable.
It reminds me of the rush by SAUSD to make passing algebra in 8th grade some kind of requirement. Developmentally, MOST students are not ready for that level of math at that age. It’s a researched-based fact and that is why MOST school districts had a very difficult time endorsing it’s implementation. Most declined to do that. When you set the bar up unnecessarily high it just becomes unfair and unmotivating.
Why not expect kindergarteners to learn advanced astrophysics? That’s a high bar that all the grownups can take credit for tasking the youngsters to try and achieve the unachievable, isn’t it?
Just take a donkey and beat it enough each day until it finally becomes a beautiful unicorn. It’s that kind of logic that is killing SAUSD and the students that rely on those kinds of educational decisions for their future.
Get rid of the extra credits. Get rid of developmentally unsound expectations. Get REAL SAUSD. Enough of the pretense, already. “Education First”, my butt.
BTW: Reducing the number of credits will be way over-used as a cost cutting measure by the administration and board of education. So despite being the smart thing to do on behalf of the students, it will wind up being a weapon against teaching staff to cut positions. And it will also be used against the students to further cut back on a larger selection of course choices.
Just wait and see…..
Originally, it was proposed as a way to decrease class size. Of course, now it will be used as another way to cut teachers, we know that. The district plans to RIF over 500 teachers again this year.
The district plans to RIF over 500 teachers again this year.
That’s an exceptional claim. Has that actually been discussed in public like a board meeting? How is this true?
Yes, RV but the high standards come directly from the state and the district has no choice but to implement them. I agree with everything you said, we are overwhelming our students and turning them off to education by continually teaching things that most students are not developmentally ready to learn. We spend so much of our time testing now that the amount of time spent actually teaching decreases every year, yet we continue to expect more. You can trace most of this to NCLB and our ridiculous state legislators.
We need fact-based decision making all around, but especially in education. Our education rank in the world is unacceptable. We need to change tacts and use proven techniques and researched-backed methods.
Testing companies and textbook companies have profited, while student learning has suffered greatly.
Yes #24, in fact Ana Valencia-Verdin was there and as she spoke firmly to the board, she affirmed that it is unacceptable to reduce the Science requirement from 3 yrs. to 2 yrs. She directly told the board that SAUSD needs to assume responsibility in offering 3 yrs of Science. She contradicted Russo’s team of 3 idiots up there that claimed that their plan met UC/CSU requirements. Ms.valencia verdin brought up the fact that some students need to take a Science course prior to taking Biology and that keeps them out of a UC or CSU since SAUSD will not be offering summer courses to allow these students to meet uc/csu requirements. You should have seen the look on the board’s face when Valencia-Verdin was called up to speak! She meant business as she told them to raise the bar and that if it pushes students to continuation school then so be it- rather than setting up our kids for disadvantages in a global revolution of science and math based industries/fields and not being able to strengthen their math and science foundations in order to achieve in placement tests in uc’s/csu’s. I agree with Valencia-verdin that Math and Science should be very important to educators-we know that kids in China are building robots in grade school while our kids are victims of poor administration. This board just wants to manipulate data by claiming that graduation rates have increased all of a sudden and like someone mentioned earlier- “it is all about $$!!! I think the only two people in the room that spoke out for a better future for the students were John Palacios and Ana Valencia-Verdin. Others in the room were glad to be contributing to creating a generation (Santa Ana kids) that won’t be competing with their own children who are in other school districts. I am glad that some of our kids are taking more that is required-let’s hope we can push this board to increase these numbers by offering more support. As it is Russo’s team of 3 bozos felt no shame in mentioning the counselor to student ratio – get this– 1 counselor to 394 students. Woooo!!!
Are you there, God? It’s us, oppressed hostages in Santa Ana!
Number of credits required to graduate is a moot point, if students were taught to pass the class the first time there would be no problem. My kids are not required to read anything in english class, they are given worksheets and the teacher reads them the book in class kind of like 1st grade 6 years later. I don’t know if they can make threw hi school.
There math tests are just worksheets for adding and subtracting.
Do I need to move my kids to mater dei in a year and a half.
Im a student, arnt they just reducing credits because they dont have enough money to teach the students? Not enough money to pay the teachers? I dont mind 220 credits, im well over 240 already…
Maybe we shouldnt have voted for Arnold…
I, too am a student in SAUSD. I find nothing wrong in the lowering of credits. Actually, I too am over my requirements already. Just because we’re in Santa Ana and most of us are hispanic doesn’t mean we’re all stupid and lazy; that’s stereotypical. Other schools- “rich” smarter schools have lower requirements. Why is it so bad that SA lower theirs? Its still not as low as other districts.