School lets all students jump onto `smart track'

The high-school sophomores in Steve Kahl's college-level English class are talking about the grades they deserve for the morning's discussion about a World War II novel. One boy says he should get a C or D since he didn't say much about the central theme of jealousy: ``I kinda feel stupid when I say things, so I'll say stupid things, like now.''

Kahl considers this. ``There's a certain vulnerability involved in being an intellectual,'' he said. The Mountain View High teacher assures the class of 24 -- most of whom have never taken a college-level course -- that he, too, feels stupid sometimes and that ``the biggest critics are in our own heads.''

Their discussion goes to the heart of the school's experiment in equity: allowing any student -- not just those who earn top grades or go through complicated sign-up procedures -- to enroll in college-level Advanced Placement courses and traditionally tough honors classes.

Principal Pat Hyland hopes the payoff will be more Latinos and blacks gaining access to the best universities. She also hopes any student, regardless of ethnicity, feeling unfocused and stuck in the ``regular'' track will instead run with the ``smart'' kids and head toward the prosperous future promised by a top university degree.

And preliminary data looks promising. On the year's first report cards, the average grades in AP and honors classes were nearly identical to those from a year earlier, despite a surge in enrollment.

Mountain View is banking on lessons learned from similar efforts across the Bay Area and the country. Top educators say Mountain View's approach -- inclusive but backed by plenty of support such as tutoring -- could inspire other schools to follow suit if successful.

The experiment also elicits new worries. Newcomers to the high-level classes worry that they won't measure up or they'll make their whole racial or ethnic group look dumb. The veteran college-track students worry that teachers will water down difficult curriculum. And teachers worry that students will take on more than they can handle and fail.

But Hyland is trying to prove her critics wrong. And she recognizes that the school's old policy rewarded students who knew how to work the system and penalized those who didn't.

``Our system has its own built-in privilege and we need to dismantle that,'' Hyland said.

`Social mobility' implications

AP classes are offered nationwide in subjects such as English, U.S. history and calculus. They typically present college-level material in preparation for exams that earn students who pass them college credit.

Taking AP and honors classes has major ``social mobility'' implications. Students who haven't taken at least some of the toughest classes in high school don't stand a good chance of getting into the country's Yales, Harvards and Stanfords.

So the College Board, the national college prep organization that administers AP exams and the Scholastic Aptitude Test -- long used as an indicator of preparedness for college -- is encouraging high school administrators nationwide to follow the lead of Hyland and others like her.

Hyland's decision is pioneering on a local as well as a national level. The Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District is keeping a close eye on the policy, which could be implemented districtwide if successful. The district's other school, Los Altos High, is also grappling with the racial disparities in its AP and honors enrollment.

Last school year, Mountain View High's student body was 16 percent Latino and 4 percent black. But Latinos occupied only 6 percent of seats in AP and honors classes, and blacks occupied 1 percent -- an imbalance Hyland calls ``the injustice I'm trying to address.''

And an imbalance that reflects a national reality, said Glenn Singleton, president of Pacific Educational Group, a San Francisco firm that has provided diversity training to Mountain View High's faculty. ``Schools are often not set up for students who are not middle-class and white,'' he said.

Jeannie Oakes, a UCLA education professor who researches tracking and how it affects low-income and minority students, said two things need to happen for an open-enrollment policy to work: A school needs to recruit students previously left out of top classes, and provide them with tutoring and support once they sign up.

Oakes said open-enrollment policies are gaining popularity nationwide, but ``the really enlightened policies'' are rare.

It's too soon to tell how well the policy is working at Mountain View High. A major test will be the results of the AP exams that students will take in the spring.

The school is doing everything Oakes recommends and then some. On top of various recruitment and tutoring efforts, many teachers plan to serve as mentors for Latino students, who as a group most need to improve their standardized test scores.

Jump in enrollment

So far, the proportion of minorities in AP and honors classes hasn't changed much. But so many students from every ethnic group have signed up that the number of such classes offered jumped from 32 last year to 45 this year. Forty-one percent of the school's 1,350 students are now enrolled in an AP or honors class, and nearly half of them are taking such classes for the first time.

On a recent test in Jim McGuirk's honors trigonometry class, the three highest scores went to newcomers. McGuirk said these students worked hard over the summer to catch up with their classmates and ``they're doing great.'' AP Chemistry teacher Katie Thornburg, however, fears that ``some of them who signed up are realizing they've taken on a bit more than they can chew.''

Newcomers used to coasting along in classes too easy for them will need to change their study skills, said Kahl, the English teacher. And they'll need lots of encouragement. ``It's not so much what students can do but what they see themselves as capable of doing,'' he said. A banner hangs in Kahl's classroom, reminding students that ``You never know what you can do until you TRY.''

Senior Alexis Aragon, for instance, is taking her first AP class. ``I should've taken AP classes before,'' she said. ``I guess I just thought I couldn't handle it.''

Under the old system, teachers had different requirements for admission to their AP and honors classes. Students sometimes had to go through as many as seven steps to get in, including attending mandatory meetings, writing an essay and taking a test. A student who was not admitted to a class could appeal the decision.

Principal Hyland realized that plenty of bright students -- of all ethnicities -- weren't getting into the top classes because they were afraid to challenge the system.

Sophomore Yeneli Hernandez said she realizes now that her classes last year were too easy. Now she's taking AP Spanish, AP English and honors chemistry, and she said the extra challenge is getting her ready for college.

``I've started to meet more students that I think are very smart,'' Hernandez said. ``Now I'm in classes with them. I feel smarter.''

Breaking into the ``smart'' group can be ``phenomenally intimidating,'' Hyland said. ``A lot of these kids have been together since kindergarten.''

`Standards have dropped'

Oakes, the UCLA professor, said it's especially tough for minority students to join a class of white peers. ``Every time they raise their hand, they feel they're carrying the whole burden about their race or ethnic group about whether they're smart,'' she said.

Senior Jacob Markovitz said he has loaded up on AP and honors classes throughout high school partly ``to be surrounded by the best students, the overachievers.'' Markovitz said he's not thrilled with the open-enrollment policy because ``the standards have dropped a little bit. There's people who aren't used to working as hard.''

Hyland said the most common concern she's heard from students and parents is that teachers will make tough classes easier.

But Oakes said that concern could sometimes have another underlying cause. ``Families will often talk about educational quality,'' she said. ``It's an acceptable thing to talk about. The racial fears are just below the surface.''

Many teachers are offended at the suggestion that they would make classes easier. ``You can't water down an AP curriculum,'' said Thornburg, the chemistry teacher. ``The AP curriculum is what the College Board sets it to be.''

Phil Faillace, a trustee for the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, said the school board is watching closely to make sure that teachers don't dilute honors courses, where they have more control.

``It is not our goal to take rigorous courses and make them less rigorous just for the sake of giving people an honors label,'' he said.

Kahl, for one, is working to personalize assignments based on the areas where students need the most help. ``I wouldn't call it watering down the curriculum,'' he said. ``I call it equity.''