Ninth-graders in D.C. public schools won’t be allowed to take foreign-language courses next year so they can instead focus on core subjects, a decision parents argue penalizes high-achieving and college-bound students.
Officials told The Examiner what’s being prescribed is a rigid course-work sequence that forces students to take subjects like math and science in favor of electives.
Once they reach 10th grade, they have the option of a foreign language. But by then, the damage is done, according to parent Lee Glazer.
“They believe our students don’t really need a full, balanced curriculum and will have to subsist on a full day of standardized test preparation,” Glazer said. “Never mind that most decent colleges require four years of foreign language instruction, or that by missing out on language as a ninth-grader, you’ll never get the chance to get AP-level classes later on.”
Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson, wrote in an e-mail to The Examiner that the strategy is to concentrate on classes students must take for graduation.
Audits done by school leaders have shown that guidance counselors are, in many cases, not properly scheduling students. The result is that by the time high schoolers get to their junior or senior year, they have missed core classes and can’t graduate, Hobson said.
Cathy Reilly, a parent in charge of a coalition of the District’s high schools, said she could understand this logic, but only to a point.
“It would be good to capture students with foreign-language classes, not prevent them from taking them,” she said.
Reilly also worried that excelling students would be penalized.
The structure being proposed is generally referred to as a “four-by-four block” setup because students take four longer courses each semester rather than take double the amount of shorter classes.
For ninth-graders, this amounts to classes in English, math, world history and science.
“The drawback is that when a student is absent, they miss twice as much,” Reilly said.
