Effort to Stretch Curriculum Comes Up Short at Largo High

This school year, Rajon Mozee, a junior at Largo High School, has attended a Chinese class where the teacher doesn't speak Chinese and a computer graphics class where he says the students have never touched a keyboard.

In first-period Computer Graphics 1, Rajon, 16, said he draws assignments by hand as a lab full of brand-new Macintosh computers goes unused. A typical task in third-period Chinese 1 is to review 10 English words listed on the board, their Chinese equivalents, and their pronunciation, Rajon said. The students copy what's on the board and turn the words in. They receive an A for the day.

The problems in both classes illustrate the difficulties a school system can face as it seeks to implement more challenging and unfamiliar course offerings and prepare students for the rigors of college. At Largo, officials acknowledged that the courses have been troubled by a lack of solid planning and instruction.

"You can be frustrated, but you look at your options and keep moving on," said Largo's principal, Angelique Simpson Marcus. "Both programs are popular, and we would like to retain them."

Simpson Marcus disputes some of Rajon's complaints. There may have been some delays getting the computers hooked up, but the graphics lab has been in use since January, she said. As for the Chinese class, it's true that Largo has struggled to find a replacement for a teacher who quit days before school started. Students have been taught by a series of three substitute teachers; none has been qualified to teach Chinese. And that's just in Rajon's class. The school has 64 students enrolled in four Chinese 1 sections and 24 students in two Chinese 2 sections, Simpson Marcus said; they are all taught by the same substitute.

William T. Ritter, the assistant superintendent who oversees Prince George's high schools, said the system is not alone in its struggle to fill high-level offerings. Even the well-regarded Montgomery County school system has stumbled with a groundbreaking Chinese immersion program it established in 1996, some parents say. Of 22 students who started that year, only three remain, with several citing inadequate coordination among the grades and uneven assessments as reasons for dropping the class.

"It's frustrating. It's even embarrassing," Ritter said of the problems in Prince George's. "It's all about communications, collaboration and reminding each other that the angels are in the details."

Rajon's mother, Jan Mozee, was less delicate: "The system is broke," she said.

Neither of Rajon's troubled classes was ready when Largo High began the school year Aug. 20.

The Chinese teacher quit the Friday before classes started, Simpson Marcus said. In computer graphics, the computers were still in boxes, and chairs, tables, cables and a video projector hadn't arrived, Ritter said. Simpson Marcus chalked this up to "some confusion between the school district and the office of curriculum and instruction."

Although students were given the option of transferring out, both classes remained open. Administrators said they were hopeful that solutions to the problems with both classes were just around the corner. In computer graphics, the students met in a classroom without computers and learned art by hand while administrators waited for the needed equipment. A substitute was assigned to teach Chinese while the school system searched for a new teacher -- a hard task, given the nationwide shortage of Chinese instructors.

Both classes were meant to engage students like Rajon, new to Largo. Poor grades cost him a place at Queen Anne, a private school in Upper Marlboro, and his mother acknowledged that he didn't work hard enough. Yet he has a passion for electronics and Asian culture.