By Dee Longfellow
In its Thursday, Feb. 10 issue, the Elmhurst Independent published a story based on information obtained from a release issued by a newly-formed group called Elmhurst Parents for Integrity in Curriculum, or EPIC, made up of District 205 parents, especially those of York High School students, who have various concerns.
The release contained accusations toward York principal Shahe Bagdasarian that demand clarification, especially the claim that York plans to “get rid of final exams in many classes.”
The Independent was able to sit down recently with York Principal Bagdasarian and Tonya Daniels, director of communications for District 205, to provide the opportunity to respond to and clarify those accusations.
“We are not here [in this meeting today] to discuss EPIC, we have nothing to say for or against them,” said Daniels. “We just want to clarify some of the things in the article [that ran in the Independent],”
About final exams…
“The quote [in the release] was that I got rid of exams,” Bagdasarian said. “But we got rid of traditional final exams. We still assess our students all along the way, it’s an ongoing process, it’s not just a one-time exam, we do it throughout the semester, just like a doctor will diagnose a patient all along the way of their recovery.
“We’re constantly using assessments and homework assignments to understand and provide feedback to students so they know what they need to learn.
“It is also for our teachers to drive their instruction. Every student learns at a different rate and we have to acknowledge that, especially coming off last year [and the pandemic]. [If] we have some gaps in learning, we want to make sure we are meeting the needs of all of our students.
“Eliminating traditional final exams gave us an opportunity to adjust to more current times of what you see at colleges and universities today. A project-based assessment, for example, could be a re-learning opportunity to make sure students have the essential skills and knowledge to move on to the next semester with confidence and have what they need to be successful.
“Another thing about non-traditional exams is that we want to prepare our students for life after high school and to do that, we have to make sure they are learning and, if they DON’T learn, we give them those opportunities to re-learn it, going back to the point that all students learn at different rates.
“Low expectations occur when you allow failure to happen and you don’t turn it into any type of learning opportunity.”
Teaching grit, perseverance
“In addition, when we allow students to go back and re-learn something, it teaches them grit and perseverance and those are key skills today. We’re teaching them how to persevere when they struggle, we’re teaching them to self-advocate, to talk to their teachers and address their own learning issues.
“We are very student-centered at our school, our kids are our greatest asset and we want to make sure we’re supporting them so they can be successful. That is our goal and that is our focus.
“First and foremost, we are educators.”
Exams still required in certain courses
Bagdasarian pointed out that some courses still require final exams.
“We have AP courses, where they have to do assessments,” he said. “We have ACP (Advance College Placement) courses to get into universities, that still require a final exam. But our focus has been making sure students are learning, making sure they have supports, making sure we are giving them what they need to be successful throughout their lives, not just to pass a high school exam.
“Some critics have said that doesn’t prepare them for college, but they still have plenty of tests that take throughout the semester. They’re still getting tested, they’re still learning to take things they learned in class and test the knowledge of what they know and don’t know in a traditional test. We still do diagnostics so students know where they are excelling and where they are not and then, we go back and take a look at what they are not understanding.
“We’re focusing in on what they need rather than just a test score.”
“There are so many things at York offers throughout various areas, be it in classroom or personally,” Daniels said. “There are so many different advocacy groups and hot lines and so many things they offer students that other people aren’t even aware of and it all works together to make sure students have what they need to enter society.”
“We educating our kids, we are making sure they are learning,” Bagdasarian said. “Take the baseball player who can’t swing a bat, do you say, ‘you can’t swing a bat? Go sit on the bench!’ No, you teach that player how to swing a bat, how to hit a ball, and they learn grit and perseverance as they try to get better. If they sit on the bench, that just signifies low expectations.
“You can’t tell a child who can’t read, ‘oh well, go sit over there,’ we have to do everything we can to get that child learning, we have to maintain the structures in our schools to assure that child’s success.”
Asked if there was anything else in the news article that needed clarification, Bagdasarian said the following:
“The claim that we are about lowering expectations, I would argue that the dots didn’t connect on that,” he said. “I just want to clarify that our new format for assessing students is going to give our students more success to be better prepared for all of life.
“You’ll be seeing more and more high schools doing this, we’ve been hearing from officials of other schools.”
How did we get here?
“In the first semester [of last year], we noticed higher failure rate, mostly due to COVID and remote learning,” Bagdasarian said. “We sat down and said what are we going to do to help kids catch up and stay on track? We put a Winter Academy in place for kids who were failing or whose grades were incomplete. Even during the pandemic, we allowed students to come in on a Saturday for in-person instruction to help them improve their grade.
“They didn’t go into second semester unprepared, we gave them the skills they needed to keep up.
“We have to build strong foundational skills for our students, especially in math,” he said. “In math, you can’t skip ‘a’ and ‘b’ and expect to get to ‘c’ – they need step-by-step instruction to get there. It goes back to the re-learning, if it is needed. When you’re bad in math in 7th grade, you’ll be bad at math all through high school if we don’t address it early on.”
York grads appreciate high expectations
“We have very high expectations for our students,” Bagdasarian said. “And if you talk with York students who have graduated, they will tell you they entered the world much better prepared than many of the others they’ve met along the way.
Daniels noted that some parents have criticized District 205 for not involving parents and other stakeholders in local education.
“They say we should engage members of the public and concerned parents and we are always open to speaking with anyone who has any concerns.” Daniels said.
“When decisions are made, we engage our students and our staff, our administration, I have a parent advisory group, so these things are always shared to get feedback and different perspectives,” Bagdasarian said. “Education is like the medical field. Education is progressing and evolving and the skill set today’s kids need is different from the ones we had. Sometimes they say, if you had to have surgery, would you want the doctor who graduated long ago or the one who graduated more recently? We want our students to keep up.
“Our job is to prepare kids for life after high school. And that’s what we do.”
