Side by Side in Santa Paula: One School's Success

By James Willwerth/Santa Paula

Math teacher Zbigniew Zielina was puzzled by the silence. It was early in the school year, he was about to begin his algebra class, and the Santa Paula High School instructor detected none of the loud talk and scraping chairs that usually marked his students' entrance. He turned to investigate. "I see 30 kids quietly copying the questions," he recalls. "They were ready to work. In all my years, I have never seen this."

Until last September, no one in Santa Paula, Calif., had. That's when the tiny (pop: 27,000) farm community, about 65 miles northwest of Los Angeles, decided to integrate its college-prep and "general" education students so that slow, average and accelerated learners would sit side by side. It is a bold experiment. Segregating students by ability--a vintage classroom organizational tool known as "tracking" or "ability grouping"--is practiced in at least 80% of U.S. high schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But in Santa Paula, anger at the grouping system had smoldered for decades. "This is a small town that's been run the same way forever," says special-programs teacher Lisa Salas, who went through school on the "standard" track and says she struggled unprepared through college. Her father Robert, a retired investigator for the local district attorney's office, was so angry about his own low-ball education that he ran for and won a seat on the school board. During the campaign, he found that most townspeople agreed that Santa Paula's schools provided a quality education for its few high achievers but substandard schooling for the majority of students.

In 1996 the district hired superintendent William Brand, who had helped eliminate tracking in Escondido, Calif. Brand immediately set out to do the same at Santa Paula High School. But he faced resistance. Virtually the entire English department opposed the change, claiming that mixing high-achievers with average students would force the curriculum to be "dumbed down." Calls from angry or worried parents flooded Brand's office. "They thought the world was ending," he recalls.

After months of debate and a raucous school-board meeting, supporters of detracking, like science teacher Ray Sepulveda, won out. On his own, Sepulveda had detracked his classes a decade earlier, eliminating prerequisites so that any student who wanted to take college-prep or honors courses could do so simply by signing up. "I think everybody should be exposed to the good stuff," he says. To ease the transition to the new, detracked environment, principal Antonio Gaitan organized after-school tutoring and Saturday enrichment classes for 700 former standard-track kids. "It's vital to build in curriculum support," Gaitan explains. "You don't just throw kids into the deep water." Have they learned to swim? The early results, at least, are promising. Doomsayers predicted that at least half the student body would flunk out in the new system, but by the end of last year 80% had a GPA of 2.0 or better; 47.5% had a 3.0 or higher. The school's average combined SAT score rose from 869 to 953. "It's been good for some people," says junior Chris Garmon. "You get challenged."

Still, not everybody is pleased. "The English department is struggling," says chairman Steve Halverson. In 11th-grade classes, readers with 10th-grade skills study alongside students with college-level ability. Says Halverson: "You're constantly asking, Where do I aim?" And Morgan Montoya, a high-achieving student, gripes that former standard-track classmates "ask you to explain stuff to them. It takes longer." But the science department's Sepulveda sees alchemy in that: "Honor students are learning the most critical skill of all: leadership."

Brand admits that the new, heterogeneous classroom climate has forced teachers to work harder. "You can't just lecture now," he explains. "You have to communicate." If nothing else, the overhaul has brought an element of excitement and experimentation into Santa Paula High's classrooms. By the end of the school year, math teacher Zielina found an enthusiasm for learning in his mixed-ability classes that he once spotted only among honor students. Says Zielina, smiling: "The world is changed."

--By James Willwerth/Santa Paula