If school officials have their way, future high school students in Calumet City and Lansing will have to pass tests in both English and math and maintain a C average before they can graduate.
The plan is part of a major proposal by Thornton Fractional School District 215 Supt. Ken Olsen, and intends to change both what students are taught and the methods used by teachers.
”We`ll give them all the help we can, but students will be held accountable for success,” Olsen said Wednesday. ”We have to prepare students to be able to function after high school. No excuse for failure changes the consequences of that failure.”
Under the plan, students would take both the math and English tests in their freshman year and the math test again in their sophomore year. If they pass, they still would have to maintain a C average in both subjects. If they fail, they would have to retake the test each year until they pass.
No one would graduate without passing the tests, which would be devised by the faculties.
”The emphasis must be on achievement,” Olsen said. ”We`re trying to raise expectations.”
The school board is expected to vote on the plan next March. If approved, the change would take effect in the 1992-93 school year. It would apply only to the incoming freshman class that year and afterwards. Students now in the schools would not be affected.
The school district serves about 1,200 students at Thornton Fractional North High School in Calumet City and 1,500 students at the Thornton South campus in Lansing.
The plan is the latest effort to improve student performance in the south suburbs. Last week, Community High School District 218, based in Oak Lawn, decided to add another 50-minute instruction period to each day`s schedule. That move is believed the first of its kind in the state, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.
But state officials said Wednesday they did not know if the competency tests proposed by the Thornton Fractional district are unique.
”We have state minimums, but local boards can set tougher standards,”
said state board spokesman Lugene Finley, who added that the state board does not keep track of those districts that are imposing stricter standards.
But he endorsed the idea. ”If what they are trying to determine is what students know, and not just measuring seat time, then they are moving in the same direction we are asking schools to go.”
Olsen made his plan public at Tuesday night`s school board meeting, saying he wanted parents, teachers, students and administrators to discuss it over the coming months.
For some in the district, the plan raised immediate questions.
Nora Stanczak, president of the Memorial Junior High School PTA in Lansing said that ”a lot of parents will be questioning the plan and asking exactly how it will it help my child.”
Stanczak, who is a substitute teacher in the district and the mother of a 6th-grade student, said she was concerned that teachers would simply ”teach the test.”
But Olsen said the tests were an important part of the district`s ”long- range mission” to improve overall student performance.
According to the most recent state report cards on school performance, students at both Thornton Fractional schools scored below state averages on 11th-grade reading and math achievement test scores.
”We have to have kids who try to make it in life and feel good about themselves,” Olsen said. And unless changes are made, he said, ”There is no way to legitimately prepare a person for a job that requires technical skills.”
