ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL OF OUR SCHOOLS
On February 10, at 8:40 A.M., I enter Greeley Central High School in Northern Colorado, and see hundreds of students milling about. Many sit in hallways; they talk, fumble with their lockers, laugh, eat or read. Most are socializing. Some wear headphones. A couple sprawls on the floor, his hand on her stomach.
On the second floor I count exactly 109 students in the classrooms and halls. I look in a classroom. Seven students work at their desks. One wears a walkman; he jerks his head to the music. Another room is empty except for the teacher who is reading at her desk. Four students sit at computers in the computer room. A math teacher talks to three students. Classrooms average around four students.
Why, you parents and taxpayers may wonder, are most students not in class? Why are most students not even in the building? Why are teachers not teaching? Why has education been put on hold on this fine, crisp winter morning?
The answer is that from 8:00 to 9:25 A.M., the school is engaged in ELO – Extended Learning Opportunity – a time when teachers are available to give extra help, give make-up tests, advice and so on. But from the looks of things, ELO should be renamed, Extreme Lazy Opportunity. Like so much EJT- Educational Junk Theory – it sounds good but doesn’t work. It fails because the vast majority of students do not desire extra help.
At 9:20, I count 223 students on the second floor, double what it was forty minutes ago. Why are the halls now crowded? Because the kids who slept in have now arrived for their first class of the day. More than half the students do not even come to school until 9:25.
A simulation of students hard at work during ELO
I raise the issue because of the courage and common sense of Principal Beth Celva of East High School in Denver, who recently scrapped East’s version of ELO, called Access. “A lot of students sleep in,” said Celva. She reported that only 400 of East’s 1,920 students take advantage of Access while the rest hang out in halls or leave campus.
Colorado’s secondary schools should have scrapped Access and ELO years ago; the numbersaren’t there to justify it. Celva reported that the 1,000 students who needed the most help at East, the ones getting Ds and Fs, were the least likely to come in for Access. It should be noted that hundreds of socially conscious students cut class to protest the elimination of Access at East. “They took it away from us,” said a 14-year-old. Yes, they did; they took away 90 minutes of hanging out.
Some teachers also took advantage of the system. Judge Raymond Jones, a parent representative on East’s collaborative decision-making panel, said, “Teachers don’t give enough access to themselves during the period.” He added, “I have said all along there is no inherent right to have breakfast on school time.” Although this free 90 minutes is obviously abused, it continues year after year. It still goes on at Greeley Central, where the schedule information page tells us, “Although attendance is not taken during the ELO block, it is expected that all students take advantage of the quality time.”
Earth to Greeley Central: All students do not take advantage; not even most. Has anyone been counting the bodies in the hall?
Because this block is used so little for “quality time,” an assortment of clubs use the time for meetings. Instead of catching up on biology, Mary Sue can go to cheerleading practice or work on the yearbook, activities that used to be called “extracurricular,” and did not take up classroom time. On October 4th of this year, at Greeley West High School, the teachers held department meetings during ELO, while a huge mob of kids milled around in the commons area unsupervised. Just to be sure the time wasn’t wasted, ninth graders were treated to a showing of The Princess Bride, which was announced multiply times over the intercom.
The Princess Bride? Really? Somehow that doesn’t comport with the stated purpose of “extra help, tutoring, remediation and retesting.” It’s a form of educational bread and circuses: just keep the idle mobs entertained and out of trouble.
When educational fads take hold, administrators come under pressure to conform. Few have the courage to proclaim the emperor is naked. East High School principal, Beth Celva, gets two enthusiastic thumbs up; ELO gets a thumb in the eye, and students who are sleeping through ELO should get a kick in the pants. It’s another reason why the rising tide of mediocrity that has become American education, continues to crest.
Update – Since this piece appeared in the Denver Post and Greeley Daily Tribune on November 11, 2002, test scores have continued to be dismal.
On June 21, 2023, the New York Times reported,
The math and reading performance of 13-year-olds in the United States has hit the lowest level in decades, according to test scores released today from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, (NAEP) the gold-standard federal exam.
(Disclaimer: I was a test coordinator for NAEP)
Shutting down schools during the pandemic helps explain the low scores. But it doesn’t explain the ongoing mediocrity of the nation’s schools, another sign of American society’s sixty year transition to the current crisis.