Take us over? We've already been taken over!

Vallejo High School is an anomaly of sorts. Under No Child Left Behind, it’s not a Program Improvement school since it gets no Title I money, but it is part of a Program Improvement district. And as such, it’s a candidate for sanctions, ranging from closure, conversion to charter status or a state takeover.

But when it comes to the threat of a state takeover, Vallejo Education Association members are jaded. There’s a “been there, done that” attitude among many of them.

The district was taken over by the state when it went bankrupt in 2003, and is still in receivership as it pays off a record $60 million loan from the state. It isn’t clear to teachers what it means to be taken over again when the district is already in takeover mode.

It is clear to students, however, that things are different. For example, in June, student Terry Smith got word from his counselor that, as an intervention student, he would have to take two periods of math and three periods of English at Vallejo High this year, along with one period of physical education. Electives like woodshop, which was the only class he enjoyed as a freshman, are no longer an option.

Students considered less at risk than Smith are still required to take double periods of math and English.

Intended only to improve test scores, the remedial classes don’t count toward graduation requirements. To earn enough credits to graduate, Smith and other students have to take subjects like social studies and foreign language during summer school or a fifth year of high school.

What does Smith think of his district’s plan to increase the academic achievement of “intervention students” so the school can make its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirement under the No Child Left Behind Act? “It’s dumb. If that happens to people, nobody will want to come to school.”

Vallejo High has just graduated from the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) after showing steady growth in its API scores. About the time the school got a letter congratulating it for meeting all of the II/USP targets, it was threatened with brand-new sanctions for not making Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB for three years in a row.

Under NCLB, increasing numbers of students must be rated “proficient” in math and English each year, reaching 100 percent proficiency by 2014.

The state-appointed administrator Richard Damelio, who’s charged with dealing with the financial mismanagement of previous administrators, has decided to up NCLB’s ante and make it a requirement that all seniors meet “A-G requirements” for graduation — the eligibility requirements needed to enroll at the University of California. The school board can’t do anything about it. Since the 2003-04 takeover, its authority has been reduced to an advisory role.

When the state administrator set the bar for graduation even higher in the name of meeting NCLB requirements, teachers felt as if they’d been hit by a double whammy — especially since the school can fail to make AYP if enough students don’t graduate.

“They’re assuming that every kid is going to college, which means that all kids will have to take a foreign language for two years in order to graduate, even if they are not going to college,” says Pat Whyte, a Spanish teacher at the school and a member of NEA’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Committee on No Child Left Behind. “Many of our ninth-graders who are in Spanish don’t want to take it. They would rather do art and woodwork, but now they don’t have a choice. In many cases they either don’t show up or they become discipline problems.”

“Remediation can be a good thing if it gets the desired results,” says a counselor at the school. But he worries it won’t have the desired effect, especially when combined with A-G requirements. “If we have so many remediation students, the electives will end up going away, because we won’t have enough students who are allowed to take electives.”

“A lot of these kids are going to get regular jobs after high school,” says Ricky Rojas, a shop teacher who, along with a computer drafting teacher and a business computer teacher, received a RIF notice. “They need this class to discover themselves.”

Even kids who hate math learn it in his class “because it relates to something.” Classes like his serve as a “release valve” for students. “Some of them come to school just so they can go to woodshop.”

Jody D’Ambrose, a senior who graduated this summer, agrees. “The A-G curriculum is a good idea — it’s just not for everybody. Vallejo is a blue-collar community. The majority of students don’t go to college; they go into the workforce. I don’t think kids are going to come to school just so they can work on English and math all day.”

Finding teachers to fill the extra math and English remediation positions has been a struggle, since Vallejo High already has a teacher shortage in those areas. Last year, many remedial classes were taught by subs.

This year the high school will be going to scripted curriculum to raise test scores and meet AYP requirements, which English teacher Anna Lapid fears will change her style of teaching from interactive to drill-and-kill.

“It won’t leave much room for discussion. Such emphasis on testing doesn’t seem to leave room for any curricular development or critical thinking skills.”

“NCLB doesn’t seem to be accomplishing what it set out to do,” she adds. “It’s quashing curiosity and love of learning, and making students worry about getting the right answer on a test.”

Last year administrators came to her classes and gave the students a “pep talk” about the standardized test. She found it amusing that they talked about test scores raising property values. “A few of my students live in Section 8 housing,” she says. “Other kids don’t even think about property values. They say, ‘I’m 16. Why should I care about that?’”

The school is failing to meet the needs of its English language learners, charges English Language Development Department Chair Enrique Dominguez. Its intervention classes group new arrivals to this country with English speakers.

“They’re offering one-size-fits-all remediation, and ELL kids are very different,” says Dominguez. “The new intervention programs don’t take these differences into consideration. If you show an ELL kid a picture during the lesson, is that enough?”

Bruce Wilson, the school’s only SDAIE (Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English) teacher of government, believes that students who are barely able to speak English are being put into mainstream classes because the district does not have enough money to pay for more SDAIE instructors.

“I’ve seen these kids drop out, because the district is not providing them with the classes they need,” says Wilson.

The impact of NCLB on special education students has been devastating when combined with other accountability issues, says special education teacher Linda Louton.

“Two years ago we had to start offering algebra to special education kids to meet the minimum graduation requirement for the state. Then it was the California High School Exit Exam. Our kids were exempted from having to pass it last year for graduation, but will have to pass it this year. Now, under our district administrator’s interpretation of NCLB, they will have to pass Algebra II and geometry, take two lab sciences and two years of a foreign language.

“Our goal for now is to get them a different kind of diploma.”

She also worries that NCLB’s deadline for paraprofessionals to earn college credit by 2006 or pass a test will result in the loss of competent classroom aides who are desperately needed in special education classes. “Even if they earn college degrees, they will get low pay,” she says. “It may just drive them away.”

Both special education and mainstream teachers at Vallejo High School say the district had been doing little to help them meet NCLB requirements for highly qualified teachers until VEA President Janice Sullivan challenged the district on that point. She agreed to take on the job with the 20 percent of her time that is not allocated as “release time” for her association duties. Nearly all district teachers are now NCLB compliant.

“One of the things that really surprised me is that so many people assume our teachers are not highly qualified. They would have been amazed at how overly qualified many of our teachers are. I have teachers with master’s degrees doing unbelievable things.”

Unless things change, NCLB will ultimately “squeeze the life out of Vallejo High School and all our schools,” says ELD chair Dominguez. “It certainly is very stressful for teachers — especially teachers who have taught for many years and have a lot of experience working with kids. They know how to differentiate instruction and how to deal with issues of literacy. And they see what is happening to teaching and learning with three-hour intervention programs that are not interesting.

“Because of what we are doing, we are going to lose kids. We are already losing kids because of NCLB.”