KINGWOOD — Mastery learning and whether Preston High should have been mandating continued to be discussed at this week’s Preston County Board of Education meeting.
Teachers told the board they weren’t given time to adequately prepare for the switch to mastery learning and its different grading method.
Superintendent Steve Wotring said while he’s looking for a way to improve student achievement he didn’t mandate mastery learning.
And Board President Jack Keim reminded everyone the board said in late October mastery learning is not allowed under the current county grading policy and is not to be used.
The board voiced its opinion at the Oct. 26 meeting, when board members said they had been contacted by teachers and parents. All expressed dismay at the way mastery learning was being implemented and said staff and parent input should have been sought.
On Monday, Deanna Hershman, a teacher for 22 years, county native and parent, spoke.
Hershman said, “I don’t think there’s any of us teachers that would be upset with mastery teaching, grading, learning, whatever. I feel like we do that already. It’s just that sometimes at Preston High we do things backwards.”
She mentioned a note that went to parents at midterm about mastery learning. Teachers were shown videos in November on the subject, two months after school started, she said.
“My issue is if you’re going to do something like this, we need to know up front,” Hershman said.
And she thinks it should start at the elementary level, so kids can do math and read at grade level when they enter PHS.
Hershman said teachers were told 70% mastery was the standard. Do you want your nurse to be 70% proficient, she asked. Your mechanic?
“That was never a mandate from me,” Wotring said.
“We were told that it was,” Hershman said.
PHS “jumped into the deep end of the pool” on its own, the superintendent said.
Bigger problems
Wotring said there’s a bigger problem system-wide, which is that students have changed. There are many students who refuse to do work or to take a test. Too often, students are simply passed on.
“We’ve gotten to a culture where it’s OK for kids not to do the assignment,” the superintendent said. “We are accepting mediocrity or we’re accepting nothing at all, and that is unacceptable to me. And that’s where I said we have got to start looking at our grading practices.”
He believes the high school implemented mastery learning in an attempt to address this problem.
PHS teacher Ashley Jenkins said, “achievement levels are scary bad right now.” Students are coming into PHS achieving “significantly” under grade level, she said.
Board Member Jeff Zigray, a retired teacher who substitute teaches, said, “teachers have lost their power” to give detention and take other steps.
Keim said, “it’s plain old lack of discipline,” and without the support of the state board and legislature nothing will improve.
“They’ve taken the paddle out of school. They’ve taken prayer out of school. They’ve taken everything that a teacher had out of school except for the tone of a [teacher’s] voice, and now kids have learned that doesn’t mean anything,” Keim said.
If schools put too much pressure on students about attendance and doing their work, many parents will simply switch to home schooling. Many of those kids “get no education whatsoever,” Wotring said.
Another teacher said this year she has made more phone calls to parents and grandparents than ever in her 25-year career.
An example of “how brutally bad it is,” she said, is that students now provide false phone numbers for their parents. She gave the example of a student who gave the number for a business.
“I believe with all my heart we need to change what we do to benefit the kids,” Wotring said. The entire culture has changed, but education has not.
Board Member Jeanne Dreisbach, a retired teacher and principal, said the problem isn’t just in Preston County, it’s society as a whole.
Board Member Pam Feathers thanked the teachers for their passion for student achievement.
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