A CLOSER LOOK -- Is there gain with the pain?

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- In her 30 years of teaching first grade, Marcy Encinas

has seen children cry over scraped knees, dead goldfish and because they

wanted their mothers.

But this is the first year she has seen children burst into tears of

frustration over schoolwork.

The reason for the despair is clear.

This year, teachers throughout California were required to integrate new

state-mandated standards in language arts and mathematics into their

normal curricula.

Children are responsible for mastering the list of standards for their

grade level before they can be promoted to the next.

Many teachers say that though the idea is a good one, the expectations

are unrealistic for many children.

“I see a lot of stress being put on students and teachers,” said Encinas,

who teaches at Paularino Elementary School in Costa Mesa. “I see

children, especially at the first-grade level, being frustrated and

crying where I’ve never had that before. I do see some children [who]

through maturity can handle it, but not everyone is ready for it.”

The new standards set a much higher level of achievement for students at

a younger age.

Although teachers and students are doing their best to adjust out of

necessity, teachers said there are some things children are not

developmentally ready to do at a younger age.

“While I think the people who created them had good intentions, I don’t

think they have any idea about child development,” Encinas said.

The new standards effectively push expectations up a grade, said Danielle

Dittner, who last year taught a first and second grade combination class

at Newport Heights Elementary School.

Although students in the second grade used to master addition and

subtraction, they are now responsible for multiplication, fractions and

some division.

“We teach geometry -- area, perimeter -- I don’t even remember learning

that until junior high,” Dittner said.

The shift in what children are expected to know has not been lost on

parents, who said they noticed a drastic change from one child to

another.

“I would say there’s a huge acceleration in math, reading and spelling --

way more advanced then eight years ago,” said Jill Money, whose three

children are 8, 12 and 15.

Money said though her youngest is doing fine, she’s not so sure all her

children would have been ready for the levels they are now teaching.

The intense level of the arithmetic is what most teachers said struck

them the most.

“It looks like a group of mathematicians got together and created them

and forgot what an 8- or 9-year-old child can do,” said Vickie Weber, a

sixth-grade teacher at Newport Heights Elementary.

Most grumbling arose from the accelerated mathematics standards, but the

language arts standards also are asking students to grasp advanced

concepts at an earlier age, Dittner said.

Kindergarten is no longer about children learning shapes, numbers and the

alphabet. Students are to be reading when they finish kindergarten.

A first-grade student should now be able to write a complete paragraph

with an opening sentence, proper capitalization, punctuation, descriptive

words, sensory details and compound words, she said.

“I taught first grade, and you’re just hoping they can write a sentence,”

Dittner said. “What these kids are expected to do, these kids are not

ready to do yet.”

There are, however, those that would argue that all teachers need to do

is raise the bar and the children will rise to the occasion.

“The standards adopted by the state are rigorous standards set with the

expectation that every child can meet them,” said Marian Bergeson, former

California secretary of education. “And that means we have to assure that

the materials and textbooks reach classrooms and that the teachers have

the training to teach the standards.”

It is getting textbooks that match the standards that has teachers

pulling out their hair and parents worried about the wisdom of the

standards.

“I think it’s great to reach for high standards, but my impression is

that the publishers haven’t caught up so it seems experimental, and I

don’t like my child to be part of a big experiment by the state,” Money

said.

Bergeson contends, however, that by now the textbooks should be in line

with the state goals.

“I’ve never felt better about what we’re doing,” Bergeson said of her 30

years in education. “We can get kids to perform at a level we can be

proud of.”

Teachers’ views of the standards are by no means entirely negative. There

are several aspects that have them excited.

With every class across the state working toward the same goals, students

who move around will have more continuity in their education. This will

help close the gaps in children’s education because teachers will have a

firm understanding of what the children coming into their classes know.

“I think that it’s spelled out grade level by grade level better than

past,” Weber said. “We see what we need to teach; it’s not some sort of

surprise.”

The biggest advantage, teachers said, was that the new standards required

the schools to come together as one community to discuss how they would

integrate them. Teachers are now all on the same page.

“The good part is that it makes the staff really work together -- talking

about strategies,” Dittner said. “I think it’s good because we’re all

talking the same talk. You know, no matter where a student goes, they’re

learning the same thing.”