Observations about the Clinton County High School by Duane Bristow June 1, 1994 My son just completed a high school biology course in which he never did an experiment, never dissected an animal, never saw a microscope or never went on a field trip. My older son had one teacher who would start the class by telling the students what chapters in the book to read during the class period. The teacher would then go to the teacher's lounge or outside if the weather was good and relax and smoke until the class was over. In middle school my younger son had a physical education teacher who gave the students tests of physical condition, devised a series of exercises to improve their condition and then periodically retested them for improvement. In high school it seems that they go to the gym in physical education class and then either play basketball or sit on the benches at their option until the class is over. Sometimes other classes are spent watching current popular videos, having pizza parties, watching baseball and basketball tournaments on TV and in one case they spent a few days assembling parent information packets for the office staff. Classes sometimes have to be missed for PEP rallies for the basketball team. In a Geometry class which my younger son completed in his second year of high school, they had completed 4 chapters out of about 20 in the text in the first 80% of the class. The teacher then began explaining and expecting the class to learn approximately one chapter per day and by the time the school year ended they had covered, in one manner or another, 12 chapters of the text. My son's cousins who attend Somerset City Schools said that they had completed the entire text during the first 90% of their Geometry class and spent the rest of the school year doing supplemental projects and worksheets in Geometry. The school system's total budget increased from about 5.5 million dollars in 1989 to 7.8 million dollars this year. In spite of this, the school system ran into a $600,000 deficit for the coming school year's budget and were ordered by the state to balance the budget. To do so they eliminated 18 teacher's positions, elimated the alternate school, eliminated advanced placement classes at the high school and raised taxes, among other measures. The teachers eliminated were those without tenure, probably 2/3 of whom where some of the best teachers in the school. They also earned the lowest salaries, $20,000 to $25,000 per year. They kept the worst teachers as well as many good and mediocre teachers. Some of these are earning as much as $40,000 per year. In some cases the net result was to eliminate two good $20,000 teachers in order to keep one poor $40,000 teacher. My youngest son, the high school sophomore, is a straight A student in spite of the fact that he has never read a book more than 150 pages in length and very few of those, has never learned the principles of good writing and has very little interest in either reading or writing. He is extremely bored in school and feels no motivation to learn or challenge in his classes. He is very intelligent. For the last year he has brought home almost no homework, probably averaging less than two hours per week doing homework. He has been involved in a few class projects outside class but has seemed challenged by only three or four of those. A high school class used to meet for 50 minutes a day. The school year was supposed to be 175 days, although with special projects such as pep rallies, pizza parties, watching sports on TV, teachers who came to class 10 to 20 minutes late, and substitute teachers who had no idea what was being taught in the class probably a maximum of 120 days was actually spent studying the subject. They had 6 classes per day. Total hours studying therefore was 120 X 6 X 50 = 36,000 minutes or 600 hours. In four years therefore a student would have 24 classes with 50 X 120 = 6000 minutes or 100 hours spent per class. To improve the school system last year they changed the classes to 4 classes per day of 80 minutes each but each class lasting only half the school year. So they now complete 8 X 4 or 32 classes per four years with 80 X 60 or 4800 minutes or 80 hours spent per class. The problem with this is that it requires the school system to offer more interesting or needed or high quality classes. As a result of budget cuts they are actually offering fewer with probably only 20 to 24 classes worth taking for most students. An "improvement" they are offering students for the next year is that those students who agree to come to school 40 minutes early can take a class which will meet for 40 minutes a day for the entire school year. In return, the student can leave school 80 minutes early in the afternoon. The trade off here is one class of 40 X 120 = 4800 minutes or 80 hours vs. 2 classes of 80 X 60 = 4800 or 80 hours with a net result of one lost class and 80 hours of instruction lost. Of the eight classes my son completed this year, none were of high quality, and at least four or five were of very low quality. I am judging quality by what he seemed to learn, what he said about the class, amount of interest shown, quantity of work done, etc. I am sure that he learned much less than half what he should have in a good school system with high quality classes and motivated staff.