District 150 and academic standards

PEORIA -- The surprise firing of Peoria School District 150 treasurer/comptroller Pam Schau at the Aug. 9 school board meeting overshadowed other events.

But Sharon Crews presented more eye-opening research to the board during the public comment section of the meeting.  She writes her comments in advance, to read them to the board. Here they are:  

I may have erred a few weeks ago when I suggested that District 150 should raise the graduation requirements from 18 credits to a higher number—a suggestion  I based on Manual High School data. 

I have since learned more about Manual’s Advisory Period that is held during lunch hours and probably lasts for ½ hour (I am not certain about the exact number of minutes). 

Manual students are enrolled in an advisory period for all 8 semesters of their high school years.  What I found most astounding is that ½ credit is given for this glorified homeroom for each semester.

Students earn 4 credits (one for each year).  That means that 4 of the 18 required credits are given for these advisory classes.

Not only do students receive credit for these advisory periods, the grades

are averaged in to calculate the students’ grade points.   Talk about inflating grades that are already inflated!

With regard to the Manual grades for last year’s seniors:  Of the 204 Advisory grades for both semesters 154 were As, 41 were Bs, 7 were Cs and 2 were Ds.

At the last meeting when I gave you data showing that 62 percent of the senior grades were As or Bs, the advisory grades were not included.  Therefore, the percentage of high grades is much higher that 62 percent.

In my FOIA (request) I asked this question:  “Did the District 150 board approve credit for the Advisory Period.  Also, I asked for the date when the board approved this course—if they did.

I received the following response, “Already approved in the Welcome to High School Handbook :  counted as an elective course.” 

My when question was answered with this statement, “Minutes of all board meetings are available for public review.” 

Tonight if you are given an opportunity to speak to this issue, I would like you to provide some insight into the answer I received. 

• Are all new courses approved by this method?
  
•  Does each school have its own handbook—therefore, are you asked to approve more than one handbook? 
  
• When reading handbooks for approval, are you aware that you are approving all new courses that might be listed in the handbook?  
• Do you ever get a chance to view the content of new courses or do you just approve titles?
  
•  What is the course content for the Advisory Period and is there a different set of activities for each grade level?  I did believe that each and every new course offered in District 150 had to come to a vote.  Please enlighten us.
  
•    Most importantly, did you vote to give credit for this advisory period?

   After I had already written these comments, I had an unexpected but welcome visit with Sharon Kherat and Taunya Jenkins while we were spending an extremely pleasant evening at the showing of Jonathan Romain’s art work.

In the course of our conversation,   I told them that I would be discussing the advisory period tonight.  During our discussion they offered reasons why they feel the advisory period is beneficial.

Tonight I see no point in bringing up all the pros and cons of having such a class.   Personally my con list would be much longer than my pro list.  My guess is that most teachers and students would agree with me.  However, Manual principals have generally been enamored with the concept of homeroom.

However, tonight my main purpose is to question giving credit for these sessions.

Taunya’s rationale for giving grades and credit is that students will generally not participate in advisory period activities if they do not receive a grade.    I totally agree.  However, I still do not believe the Manual diploma should be cheapened by giving 4 of the required 18 credits for these advisory periods.

For one thing—it’s unfair; other district high schools do not give credit for homeroom.  Secondly, I believe District 150 should concentrate on raising academic standards and, thus, the reputation of the district. -30-

 

Comments

[C. J. Summers]

When will Monday's board meeting be posted to WMBD's site? Do you have any audio?

[Elaine Hopkins]

I was out of town and could not attend the meeting, so no audio. I heard Diane Vespa did the video, and I assume it will be posted soon.