Good news is filling the halls of Mission High School: Out of 890 students who attended the school last semester, 422 made it onto the honor roll, according to Principal Eric Guthertz.
“It’s a big deal; it’s pretty awesome,” Guthertz said, adding that it’s the first time he’s seen nearly half the student body achieve such an accomplishment.
Mission High has struggled with academic performance among its students for years, but has made remarkable gains in the last few months.
To make it onto the honor roll, students must have at least a 3.0 grade point average. Only final grades are taken into consideration.
Mission High plans to honor the students by hosting an awards ceremony for each grade level. Guthertz will personally hand out a certificate to each student, because he wants the student body to see which of their peers are excelling. There may also be an awards luncheon.
As for the demographic of the honor roll recipients, “I can guarantee that it hits everybody,” said Guthertz.
The students’ academic success can be attributed to several factors.
“One thing is that teachers are looking deeply at their instruction strategies,” said Guthertz, noting that at every marking period, teachers evaluate their students’ grades and create specific actions plans for those with low marks.
“I think that’s where the heart of this matter is coming from,” he said.
Being involved in athletics also helps, said Guthertz. Nearly half the school is enrolled in sports. To play, students must maintain a certain GPA.
What’s more, students have advisory periods twice a week during which academic “interventions” take place. Guthertz himself teaches an advisory period. He looks at his each of his students’ grades and, if he sees a problem, sends them to get one-on-one help from their teacher.
For the past year and a half, the school has used a website called School Loop, where students can check their grades and track their assignments daily.
“I think that’s made a huge difference. One hundred percent of teachers and students use it,” said Guthertz.
Ultimately, though, the achievement is the result of a major effort by both students and teachers.
Guthertz noted that some students who were having trouble in school have “suddenly decided they’re going to turn things around and seriously make a plan for themselves.”
For Guthertz, the good news means that Mission High “is moving in a really positive direction.”
There’s still work to be done, though.
“We also have students that didn’t make it. Why didn’t they?
“But right now I’m just really proud of students and teachers who did the work. Tomorrow will be another challenge.”
Gov. Jerry Brown, who opened two Oakland charter schools and calls himself a “reformed reformer” when it comes to education, learned the hard way how complex and challenging it is to improve student achievement. Here’s how the Educated Guess blog describes his current view:
Brown has called for a hard look at whether accountability – too much attention to standardized tests and data – has led to a narrowing of the curriculum, with less attention to arts, social sciences, and his own priority, character formation.
He expressed ambivalence in his remarks to the [state Board of Education]. On the one hand, he says he keeps hammering the military charter school, with its 735 API, to reach the state target of 800. And he used standardized test results to question why teachers were giving A’s to students who were “below basic” on state tests.
At the same time, he said, teachers’ impacts on students are intangible and critical. Love of learning cannot be measured by just mastering a test. “The role of a teacher and the relationship with students is more than something that can be rationalized into various data streams.”
Data, standards and curriculum are all important, Brown said, but “I hope we can keep the humanistic aspect of education as well as the market concepts of readiness to go into the world of work and readiness to go onto higher education.”
http://toped.svefoundation.org/2011/01/14/kirst-critics-of-state-board-are-off-base/