For a Change, Students Critique Administrators and Teachers

By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 29, 2007

Students from four Prince George's County high schools asked their teachers and administrators for more recognition, a looser dress code, refurbished buildings and better food at a quarterly meeting of the Region I Student Coalition last week.

About 50 students from Potomac, Crossland, Oxon Hill and Friendly high schools met in the Potomac High media center Thursday to have a candid conversation with their adult leaders. After a warm-up, music and speeches by the invited guests, including Superintendent John E. Deasy and student school board member Leslie D. Hall, the students got down to business, discussing what would help bolster academic achievement.

"Please, be brutally honest," Pamela Robinson, an instructional specialist, told the students.

They were.

One group of students wrote that students with low grade-point averages should be rewarded for improvement just as star students are recognized for having top grades. Some said school food is not varied enough, and that in science classes they could not do experiments properly because they were in temporary buildings.

Jasmine Ross, a senior at Potomac, said that students should not miss classes, but added that teachers also had attendance problems on occasion.

"Everybody knows which teacher is late," Ross said. "You don't want to come to a class where you sit there for 90 minutes doing nothing."

"Our walls are yellow. They have holes in them," said Brittany Birdsong, a junior at Friendly. "You can't learn with mousetraps in the corner."

Birdsong added that the uniform policy was too strict.

"The uniforms really took away from our individuality," she said. "If you want our grades to improve, we can't be restricted."

The administrators watching were sympathetic to some of the complaints.

"We know that the quality of the teacher impacts the quality of instruction," said Janice Briscoe, the Region I superintendent, adding that they are trying to improve the rigor of training for teachers as well as students.

Nathaniel B. Thomas, an at-large school board member, was pleased with what he saw.

"This is where it really matters," he said. "We have trained educators, but we really need to hear from the students in order to find out what is going on in the classrooms. We have to engage them. Students are hungry for more out of life, and we have the responsibility to give it to them."

Early HSA Scores Are Up

At the same meeting, Region I administrators also presented data to the students showing marked improvement in benchmark scores on the High School Assessments -- the group of four tests that high-schoolers will be required to pass in order to graduate beginning with the Class of 2009.

The results of the exams, which are taken in January and May, have not yet been released, but the benchmark scores point to a potential improvement in test scores in Prince George's County. That would be welcome news to the system, which was placed in "corrective action" by the state board of education in October for having low test scores.

At Potomac High, 65 percent of the students were failing the algebra test in October. In December, the number dropped nearly 20 percentage points, to 46 percent. At Crossland, 57 percent of the students were failing; that number fell to 39 percent in December.

The scores in English were much better overall, with many students ranked in the highest category. At Friendly, 19 percent of the students got advanced scores on the test in October; in December, 29 percent did. At Oxon Hill, 18 percent earned advanced scores; that jumped to 43 percent in December.

The scores on the biology test also improved, but the scores on the government test fell in two of the four schools. At Crossland, 69 percent of the students failed the government test in October; in December, 78 percent failed. At Friendly, the fraction of students who failed increased from 72 percent to 80 percent.

Scholar of the Week

William Chin, a senior at Charles H. Flowers High School, is the Prince George's County Scholar of the Week.

Chin is a star performer in the challenging science and technology program at Flowers. He has a 4.3 grade-point average and is a candidate for valedictorian. He has taken Advanced Placement classes in physics and literature and is taking math courses at Prince George's Community College.

Outside the classroom, he has received an Eagle ScoutAward, was a Maryland Distinguished Scholar and was the 10th-grade Student of the Year. He interned at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center last summer.

Chin, a member of the National Society of Black Engineers, wants to major in civil engineering and has already been accepted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He's still waiting for replies from Carnegie Mellon, Duke and the University of Pennsylvania.