S.F. parents urge programs for gifted, high-achieving students

Parents at Tuesday’s S.F. school board meeting said the district isn’t doing enough for smart students. Parents at Tuesday’s S.F. school board meeting said the district isn’t doing enough for smart students. Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close S.F. parents urge programs for gifted, high-achieving students 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Dozens of unhappy parents lined up at this week’s San Francisco school board meeting to demand the district restore programs and courses for gifted and high-achieving students.

The outcry late Tuesday revolved around changes made last year in math instruction, which included pushing the Algebra I course out of middle school and into freshman year of high school, as well as the elimination of honors courses in middle school and ninth grade.

In addition, the district had suspended the process used to identify students for the Gifted and Talented Education Program, or GATE, because the criteria relied on state standardized tests, which were put on hold for two years while schools switched to the new Common Core curriculum.

The angry parents accused the district of dumbing down instruction and ignoring or holding back smart students to focus on the needs of those at the bottom end of the achievement gap.

At its core, the uproar harkens back to the decades-old debate over tracking — or the practice of culling high-achieving students into honors or advanced courses, classes that typically served a disproportionate number of white, wealthy and Asian students.

Tracking vs. diversity

Parent Missy Sue Mastel said the district must do more for ambitious students, and can do so fairly. “We hate tracking,” she said. “We live in San Francisco and we value diversity. Choice is the answer to tracking.”

Mastel supports a proposal that would allow all students to choose their own courses in middle school, including options of accelerated math and English, without input from teachers or test scores. She is working with a coalition of parents to bring the proposal to the school board in the near future.

Ali Collins was among a handful of parents who spoke in support of the district on Tuesday. Tracking, she said, was an unfair system that identified some students as smart and others as dumb.

“Parents feel good when you say we’re putting your kids in this (honors) program,” Collins said prior to the meeting. But ultimately, it means “your kid gets to be called bright. My kid gets to be called stupid.”

District officials said the new approach offers all kids more challenging coursework, with the changes reflecting a higher bar for everyone rather than a stratified system that decides who is smart or advanced in middle school and who is not.

Early algebra ... or else

In the past, if a student didn’t qualify for Algebra I by eighth grade, they had little chance of catching up to their peers to take calculus and qualify for prestigious universities.

Now, all students stay together in the same math courses until later in high school, when those wanting to surge ahead can combine Algebra II and precalculus to then qualify for calculus senior year.

“There’s a group of parents that don’t really trust the district to challenge their kids, that the curriculum is meant to challenge all levels of learning,” said board member Rachel Norton. “I do think we have to be vigilant about what’s happening in classrooms to make sure they’re challenging all students.”

GATE closed, for now

Norton noted that GATE programs were not eliminated, but put on hold while the district determines a better way to identify which students are gifted. Under the old system, more than a third of students were identified as gifted, a rate that was seen as defeating the purpose of supporting students at the very top end of academic talent.

Students were also among the more than three dozen speakers to lambaste the district’s year-old policies, with most calling for algebra to be offered in middle school again.

“I want eighth-grade algebra because it will expand my critical thinking and my math skills,” said Sunnie Lee, 11, a sixth grader at Hoover Middle School. “This will help me with my math skills and starting my high school years.”

Superintendent Richard Carranza, however, said students are being challenged in their Common Core classes, which are more difficult with algebra included in middle school math. He said that despite what some parents believe, students can still take calculus under the new course sequence — and can still get into Stanford and UC Berkeley.

“There’s no one out to hurt kids,” Carranza said. “At some point, they’ve got to trust their school.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker