Since Chancellor Ramon Cortines began running the New York City school system less than a year ago, he has demonstrated a real concern with raising academic standards and improving the quality of education in the city's schools. This week, he unveiled his latest initiative, which would tighten graduation requirements by increasing the number of mathematics and science courses from 2 to 3 units. More important, it would require that kids who are entering freshmen in 1994 take and pass academic courses in math and science in order to graduate.
Currently, students may satisfy the math and science requirements by taking either academic courses or watered-down courses that are nothing more than glorified arithmetic and general science. Many follow the path of least resistance: According to the New York Times (May 3, 1994), 84 percent of juniors and seniors in 1992-93 chose low-level math courses and 76 percent low-level science courses. The pattern of choosing math and science courses that don't ask much of kids -- or give them much, either -- is especially prevalent among African-American and Hispanic students.
There are people who believe that minority students are helped by being allowed to elect dumbed-down courses -- that way, they say, the kids are less likely to flunk or get discouraged. But Cortines believes that this choice system is failing youngsters rather than helping them. Kids who take low-level courses are not adequately prepared for college, and the limited skills they have attained limit them in the job market, as well. His answer is to get rid of the Mickey Mouse courses altogether and make the most rigorous offerings in math and science the system standard.
The school system has already begun to make the extensive changes necessary to carry out this reform: curriculum revision; staff development programs for teachers; sessions for parents and students. And Cortines is talking about strengthening the math and science curriculums in middle school so students will be better prepared when they enter high school. However, I haven't heard anything about how students will be tested on what they have learned. This is important because it will be much easier to change the name of a course so it fits in with the new curriculum than to change the reality. The only way to make sure that kids who are taking "Geometry" or "Physics I" are actually learning the material they should learn will be through some kind of external testing like a Regents or Advanced Placement exam. Otherwise, New York City could end up with a reform that sounds good but accomplishes nothing.
So far, the response to Chancellor Cortines' initiative has been very supportive. But the real test will come a year or so down the road when a bunch of kids fail the tough courses and are faced with the possibility of not getting their diplomas. What can we expect then?
Will we hear from the federal Office of Civil Rights that the math and science courses are biased, and will New York City be told to reinstate the Mickey Mouse courses or risk losing all federal funding? Will there be legal challenges asserting every student's right to get a diploma? Or will the city be told that it must put off implementing its curriculum changes in science until every school is equipped with a fine science lab and every science and math teacher has done graduate work in his or her field?
The chancellor can forestall this kind of problem. The successful school systems of other industrialized nations do not require exactly the same courses of all their students. Math or science courses vary in difficulty depending on the program students are following. This is not the same as our practice of giving some youngsters the real thing and the rest garbage. It acknowledges the reality that some kids are better able than others to work at the highest level in math or science, but all can be held to a standard that is demanding and worthwhile; the ceiling is high, but so is the floor.
This approach is called tracking, and it's politically incorrect right now. But if the chancellor were to ignore that fact and institute worthwhile courses at varying levels of difficulty, he would not have to worry about the political heat that will be generated when large numbers of kids fail to meet his single tough standard. Instead, he'd be able to look forward to a big round of applause when large numbers of kids, all of whom had gained something worthwhile from courses in math and science, came through with flying colors.