1998_05 Insight May 1998

              N O
m(.
photo by Diorte Sorondo
Keeping track of her students is not a difficult
task. Mary Marceletti makes the time to help
support and encourage her students.
Some of Fresno's school's
compete with indigent,
environmental and
economic factors for the
children 's attention.
Where does the blame lie
and what's being done
about the low test
scores?
photo by Diane Sorondo
Hidalgo Elementary, where Stephanie Padilla attends special
education classes, is located at Belmont and Millbrook Avenues.
photo by Dione Sorondo
Gonzalez said that Stephanie's future is looking brighter, now
that she has taken up Softball (shown here with coach Mrs.
Smith).
By Stephen Smith
aria Gonzalez'
words     are
filled    with
ith hope and
photo by Diane Sorondo
FJeven-year-ord Stephanie Padilla hopes to become a doctor someday and
wants to take care of her grarvdmother, Maria Gonzalez (shown here), like
she took care of her.	
despair when she speaks of her 11-year-
old granddaughter Stephanie Padilla.
More than anything in the world,
Gonzalez, the child's guardian, wants
Stephanie to beat the odds, complete her
education and go to college.
But for Stephanie those odds are
enormous. She was born addicted to
cocaine and heroin and was immediately
taken awayfrom her mother, who had
a powerful addiction of her own that
rendered her helpless to care for her
daughter. Stephanie never even knew
her father.      ♦
Today she struggles with learning
disabilities and other medical problems
related to her mother's drug addiction.
She is several years behind her classmates in reading and other core subjects
and as a result has been placed in a special education class.
And in the Fresno Unified School
District there are many inner city children, like Stephanie, who are not making it. Test scores have been dreadful,
graduation rates low and crime and
drugs are found everywhere in today's
schools.
And the statistics depict a grim future for this struggling school district.
• Test scores for grades 1-12 in the
core subjects of math, reading and science are well below the national average, as much as 30 percentage points in
some cases.
• Three of every 10 students entering high school will never complete their
degree.
• Nearly 1,400 students dropped out
of high school during the 1995-96 school
year.
There are a variety of reasons Fresno
Unified's students have struggled.
Twenty-five percent of the district's students arc not proficient in speaking English and throughout the district more
than 100 different languages are spoken.
Teachers often lack the necessary
resources to reach students with special
needs. The rapid growing population in
Fresno has caused a shortage of teachers, forcing the district to hire some
teachers who may not be adequately
, trained. And the struggling economy has
forced many families on the move, leading to a transiency rate well above 50
percent in some areas.
But it is the issue of poverty that
seems to be the overwhelming contributor to the lack of success the district's
students have had.
Poverty's influences
Stephanie Padilla is a child of poverty and as such she began kindergarten already behind her counterparts in
more affluent parts of the city.
For students like Stephanie, whose
parents cannot buy computers or books
for their children, an education becomes
a luxury some just can't afford.
Even if a child of poverty is lucky
enough not to have learning disabilities,
such as Stephanie has, there's still a
good chance gangs, drugs, teenage pregnancies or other ills of the inner-city will
Fresno Unified School District
Percentages of Students Completing
4-Year High School
1995-1996 Figures
i   76  74 68  63   63  71
I99S-1996 Most RtctHt Figurn AraUaili
befall the student before
graduation.
Educators at Stephanie's
school, Hidalgo Elementary,
located in a dilapidated
neighborhood near Belmont
and Millbrook Avenues, are
faced with the overwhelming task of teaching students
in the most difficult of environments.
As low as the overall district test scores are, they are
even lower at Hidalgo. In
grade two, the students are
only scoring at 7 percent in
reading; the national average is 50 percent.
And the harsh environment around the school
makes it even more difficult
for teachers to reach their
students.
Gang influence surrounds the school. Students
have told their teachers
about going to sleep terrified
with the ringing of gunshots
1' lingering in their ears. Prostitutes with hard; leather-like skin, roam
the surrounding neighborhoods. Neighbors have complained of finding drug
paraphernalia on the streets.
And it Is here, in the midst of this
chaos, that teachers are expected to be
innovative and goal-oriented. They have
to be if these children stand a chance of
making it out of the inner city to succeed.
Hidalgo Principal Mary Marceletti
said that poverty cannot be an excuse
for not getting through to children. The
teachers must take on the responsibility of fighting through the child's difficulties at home to make him or her successful at school.
"Poverty doesn't explain everything," Marceletti said. "There have always been poor families. Poverty creates added stress but you can be poor
and still be stable. If you're poor and
unstable, that's when problems occur."
Marceletti has
been in the school   ■
district for nearly "OlW review Of
30 years and she
Serei^cerTafnly standardized tests
more poverty today, there was also
poverty when she
began teaching in
Fresno. She said
teachers do a
much.better job of
educating children
today than they
did when she
started.
Despite this,
there are certain
areas within the
district that are thriving.
At Bullard High School, the four-
year graduation rate is 86 percent-
more than 20 percentage points above
other schools in sections of the city that
are mired in poverty.
But Bullard's principal will be the
first to admit that the above average performance at his high school is related
directly to the environment in which it
is located.
Tim Belcher said his students do
well because they come from stable
home environments where money is not
usually an issue.
"The parents here at Bullard High
School are actively involved and that has
a lot to do with it," Belcher said. The
environment the kids come from has a
tremendous impact on how the kids do."
And Belcher's experiences at the
high school level are not just limited to
students from affluent families. He was
[j Bullard
[] Edison
Qlioover
[ (Fresno
[ j Roosevelt
[]McUne
[] District
the principal at McLane High School in
southeast Fresno for seven years before
taking the job at Bullard.
"Unfortunately, some kids have a disadvantage over other kids," Belcher said.
"At McLane, kids had parents who were
in prison and parents who were on drugs.
They didn't have supportive families and
were not involved in school activities.
Many of the kids had to go out and get a
job. They had to get to work."
Mario Baca, a professor of education
at California State University, Fresno, said
that poverty affects a child's ability to
get an education on numerous levels.
"Children from impoverished families just don't have the same opportunities as children from middle income families," Baca said. "They don't have the opportunity to go to theaters, museums and
those kinds of activities. They don't have
the same access outside of school to technology. But even more basic than that is
there's a real differential in terms of a
real lack of reading materials like
books, newspapers, magazines
and so on."
Baca said
children from
impoverished
families usually
find themselves
with a lack of
support at home'
because either
their parents
may not value
MARY ANN LARSEN education.be-
proiessor of graduate studies in   "use »n many
cases, they themselves had little
education, or the
parents are so busy trying to put food on
the table that they are unable to spend
time nurturing their child's appetite to
learn.
The nomadic life
Students in poverty are also often the
victims of their parent's need to relocate.
Many educators are frustrated by their
inability to have an entire school year to
reach a child.
At Fresno High School the transiency
rate is 57 percent.
Dora Leal, a counselor at Fresno High
School, said she has seen firsthand the
affect poverty and transiency has on high
school students.
"Most of the kids we see in this area
are from economically disadvantaged
families," Leal said. "They are just trying to survive from day to day and in
may not be telling
us what we think
they're telling us."
education
see EDUCATION, page 7
Insight Special 4   May 6,1998