Santa Cruz Teachers Try To Get Kids To Take STAR Seriously
Sixty students from two graphic design classes borrowed pop culture images, from P. Diddy to Uncle Sam, to create humorous posters encouraging classmates to take the tests and take them seriously.
The message was inescapable; movie posters hung in every classroom and every office. And the outcome paid off: All but two of the school's roughly 800 students took the tests, which wrapped up a week ago.
"A lot of colleges can look at your score and it can be harder to get into college," sophomore Logan Gillis said of the school's Academic Performance Index and Adequate Yearly Progress scores, which are government ratings that, affected by test results, can place a school onto a program-improvement watch list.
Gillis' poster featured Darth Vader, the antagonist of the Star Wars series, holding the end of his light saber in one hand while he tries to insert a large light tube into the weapon. The caption reads: "Why didn't I take those STAR tests seriously?"
"A lot of people said it was really funny," Gillis said.
It's easy to understand why schools have struggled to keep participation rates high.
Individual scores from the Standardized Testing and Reporting tests -- which assesses language, math, history and science comprehension -- are not routinely printed on student transcripts.
That can make results, which won't be known until August, seem far less critical for getting into a college than SATs. STAR tests, which are given to students in grades 9-11, are also not mandatory and can take the better part of a week to plow through.
But, a high overall school STAR score is coveted by administrators like a stage mother covets a crown in her daughter's beauty pageant. Getting good data is the ever-present beast educators must feed every day, one way or another, to prove at least on paper that they're doing their jobs.
When Bariteau joined Scotts Valley High three years ago, the school's participation rate hung around 60 percent. "All the teachers were saying, 'Nobody cares, nobody takes it seriously,' " she said.
She spread a lot of what she called "gloom and doom" among students about the effect of low scores.
"I talked to them about what is API and how it is used to make judgments about us, about our county's schools and about our community," she said.
She explained how low ratings on the API and AYP can lead parents to transfer their kids to another school where scores are higher, which causes enrollment and related funding to drop. That can cause cuts in teachers and courses.
This year, Bariteau recruited the help of graphic arts teacher Emily Brandt, who came up with the idea of poster making. Not only did the project provide good in-class experience, it created a successful public relations buzz as kids gathered around the posters.
"At first, there were a lot of moans and groans," said Brandt, who offered blow-up dolphins, glow-in-the-dark jewelry and other prizes for the best posters. "The reputation of STAR testing is not fun. We found a way to make it fun."
One student superimposed Bariteau's smiling face on Uncle Sam's body in the famous "I Want You" Army poster from 1917. Senior Michael Kaufman, who was ineligible to take the tests, also pitched in by putting a STAR spin on an iconic war image -- the Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It" poster from World War II.
"I did not want to work on it at all," she said. "But, I actually got into it."
At Harbor High in Santa Cruz, Assistant Principal Gwen Heskett engaged parents and students in a campaign about the importance of STAR testing, but ultimately zeroed in on a generations-old tool to ensure teen cooperation: snacks.
Teachers passed out trail mix and Goldfish crackers and spread the testing out over a month's time -- they still have two weeks to go -- to ease the pain and boredom. Teachers also reinforced the bearing that scores can have on a school's reputation.
"The No. 1 influence for them is how serious a teacher takes it, and a lot of them really treat it as something that is meaningful in that it is a way our school is being assessed," Heskett said.
Watsonville High Principal Murry Schekman found another teen soft spot: electronics. Students who were deemed to be trying hard -- "Kids who finish in five minutes and put their heads down aren't trying" -- got a ticket for a free piece of pizza and the chance to win a daily raffle prize, which included iPods bought with donations from Granite Rock Co.
Though participation rates hit around 98 percent last year, 70 percent of the school's ninth-graders tested at the basic comprehension level or below in English-language arts. Schekman knows he's got his work cut out for him in trying to reverse a long-standing trend at the school.
After joining the district several years ago, he said, "It was very clear that the school wasn't taking testing seriously. As long as other schools like Watsonville High are performing at high levels, I'm going to make sure kids and teachers take it seriously."
May 07, 2008
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