Low expectations: Some schools make tests worth more

Dwight Jones clearly has some work to do to erase the bigotry of low expectations within the Clark County School District.

The new superintendent and Pedro Martinez, the deputy superintendent, this year gave middle schools the option of making final exams worth 20 percent of semester grades instead of the previously mandated 10 percent.

Making finals worth only 10 percent of a student's grade allows bright students who've worked hard all semester to blow off the exams, knowing that a score as low as 30 or 40 percent will still guarantee an A. The low standard also shields weaker students, allowing them to achieve misleading passing grades, by putting more weight on homework and classroom participation.

Mr. Martinez said about half the district's middle schools stepped up to adopt the 20 percent standard. The Review-Journal's Trevon Milliard reported Monday that "schools keeping semester exam values at 10 percent appear to be those with high percentages of at-risk students."

The reasons such at-risk schools decided to stand pat amount to making excuses for students. Kim Senatore, a seventh-grade math teacher at Orr Middle School, said she didn't want to mark down a student who "worked his butt off" from a B to a D because of one bad day. "Kids are up to 3 a.m. because of fighting parents, mom is arrested, or parents drag them out playing bingo all night. I'm not going to zing them that hard."

Ann Brown, principal at Fremont Middle School, said heavily weighted semester exams would hurt her transient campus, rather than help them catch up. "It's always nice to be given the choice. We're all very different."

In a meeting with the Review-Journal's editorial board last month, Mr. Jones and Mr. Martinez said such reduced expectations are a big reason why roughly half of the district's students don't graduate from high school, even with some of the least academically rigorous standards in the country.

"Kids can reach a higher bar," Mr. Jones said. "A lot of kids, they know we don't expect a lot of them ... I'd much rather see us get worse with a high bar and make strides to get to where we need to be than stay on this false ride we're selling to parents and kids."

Mr. Martinez added: "Forty-five percent of our incoming 12th-graders have not passed the High School Proficiency Exam," which is first administered when students are sophomores. "The proficiency exam is ninth-grade material. Parts of it are eighth-grade material."

Next year, Mr. Jones and Mr. Martinez shouldn't offer a choice. Make semester exams worth 20 percent of semester grades at every school. Our students are smarter than we give them credit for. We just have to make them work.