Dear Santa

We felt like kids sitting on Santa’s lap at the parent meeting Monday evening at the high school, with a former superintendent from another district unwittingly playing the role of Santa. She asked us what we wanted in a new principal at Sonoma Valley High School (following the retirement of Micaela Philpot next June), and she dutifully made out the list. Like most lists for Santa, it was long, it was detailed and it was optimistic. Instead of the four flipchart pages she filled with small print, we’d like to offer a simpler request, direct to Santa.
Get a group of high school parents talking about academics, and the term “mediocre” often surfaces, as it also has over the years at school board meetings. There’s a general feeling in the community that too little is expected of our students. Is that really the case? There’s probably some truth to it, and certainly test scores, graduation rates and college enrollments indicate that the students, in general, produce little in return. We’ve written about this before, but some facts are worth noting again:
• Less than half of high school juniors test “proficient” in English reading and writing.
• Less than half of high school juniors test “proficient” at U.S. History, a course they’ve all just taken that year.
• Each incoming freshman class loses a quarter or more of its number by the time graduation comes four years later.
• Of those who graduate, less than half go on to four-year colleges.
Is this because our students are too dim to handle grade-level work? We don’t believe that. Is it because there are low expectations for them? Probably that’s part of the problem. Do they have low expectations for themselves? Probably that’s part of it, too. Do they come into high school unprepared? And probably that’s partly to blame.
What we really want is for all our students to be ready for what lies ahead. Long-time career counselor Mick Chantler used to say that the personal qualities needed for success in college are the same as those for success in the workplace, which we summarize as responsibility, respect, integrity, thoroughness and self-discipline.
Can a new principal raise student achievement? Can the high school get our students “ready”?
We think so, but it’ll take, foremost, a principal so focused on these measures of student success that he or she is willing to be unpopular in that pursuit – willing in the short run to be unpopular with students and teachers facing fresh challenges, in order to achieve success in the long run.
If the new principal is unwilling to stand up to those pressures, to further the revolutionary idea that our students CAN succeed, then we as a community shouldn’t expect much to change. Many of our youth do thrive at the high school and are indeed “ready” when they graduate. Without change, though, those will continue to be the exceptions.
Success in our public school system depends on a coordinated effort, from Kindergarten to Grade 12, to inspire students with high goals and to hold them accountable for their work. In our view, if a revolutionary high school principal focuses on high expectations, students at every grade in our district will benefit.