The pain is real and the helplessness is real. Please attend the Board Meeting TODAY at 5.45 pm and voice your concerns. If you have any stories on how IS has impacted your STEM hopes and dreams, please share it on this petition under comments. Inexperienced Teachers, useless books, and a Principal that is negligent in fixing these issues. Your help is needed if we need to make sure no child is ever impacted again by the poor execution of Integrated Science. 

Regular Meeting of the Board of Education Irvine USD
May 28, 2019 
IUSD Administration Center 5050 Barranca Parkway Irvine, CA 92604 5:45 p.m. Closed Session / 6:30 p.m. 
1. CALL TO ORDER
2. ORAL COMMUNICATION 
Opportunities for public input occur prior to closed session (limited to closed session agenda items), at the beginning of each agenda item and at Oral Communication (for items not on the agenda). Persons wishing to address the Board should complete a blue request form, available on the information table, and submit it to the Board Secretary. Each topic or item is limited to 30 minutes; each speaker is limited to 3 minutes.
3. CLOSED SESSION

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Parent Letter

Please see the anonymous letter that was sent to the Principal, Asst Principals, Science Director and all HIS2 teachers back in February.  Parents didn't want to get involved but did want to share the frustrations in a respectful and constructive way.  They not only didn't listen to the concerns, they added yet another IS class!

See below:
February 17, 2019

TO: Principal Roach
Assistant Principals
Science Director

CC: HIS2 Science Teachers

FROM: Over 20 sets of parents of HIS2 students and many more students who didn’t want to get their parents involved

SUBJECT: Final Exam grades on the HIS2 Fall Final

Dear Principal Roach,

First, we want to thank you for taking the time to read our concerns and apologize for the anonymous nature of our letter.  Many of us do NOT want to get involved in such an issue and would prefer our children to handle academic matters on their own. However, we feel the students were not treated fairly and will leave that up to you and the administration to decide.

The issue at hand is the Fall Final exam for Honors Integrated Science 2.  Many students were blindsided by the difficulty of the final questions and felt they were not prepared to answer some of the final questions due to lack of instruction.  Many students going into the final with a solid A grade failed the final.  Is this an accurate representation of the student’s ability, preparation and study habits, or a result of inadequate course materials, teaching and exposure to exam type questions?  What we would like is for the Administration and Science Department to take an honest look at the instruction, course materials, assignments and teacher’s ability to lay the foundation for students to apply knowledge on tough exam questions.

We understand Integrated Science instruction is relatively new at Northwood and more challenging to teach than the standard individual subjects of Biology, Chemistry and Physics.  As such, there is no text book nor good online resources for science instruction from an integrated approach.  However, this is resulting in a disjointed science education, taught using fragments of information (power points, portions of science chapter PDFs, insufficient practice questions), and without a solid foundation laid for future science education and inquiry.

Don’t get us wrong, we know the intentions are good and that the Science Department is trying to prepare our students for the next generation of STEM careers, science critical thinking and college readiness.  We want those same things as well.  However, we are unsure if the goal will be met with the current instruction.  We see that severe gaps in understanding and knowledge and content are being left as a result of the instruction style and course material content.  What will be done to remedy this? 

If the “honors” students are failing the final, and presumably they didn’t just neglect to study, is it the final questions or the instruction that led to this?  We strongly believe in holding the students accountable for their actions or inactions, what about the instructors, should they be held accountable as well?  What do these failing grades say about the way they prepared their students?  When is the average grade considered so low that it warrants both the Science Department and Administration to take a closer look?

It would be appropriate to share what the students feel about was happening in class, tutorial, and on tests:

HIS2 teachers were not solid in their knowledge/instruction of the subject(s) and therefore were not able to answer in-class questions well (eg, in response to student questions for clarification of topics, students were told “figure it out in your table groups,” confusion when asked certain questions on current topics and then told they would get back to them another time, instead of clear instruction which would lead to student understanding, students were often left completely confused with a realization that their teacher would not be able to explain the topic sufficiently.  Why would this be in a sophomore level science class?)
If a given instructor(s) recognizes they have difficulty explaining tough concepts in class, they should certainly provide sufficient written course materials that have the concepts well explained, especially those concepts they wish to challenge the students with application questions on the tests.  It’s very difficult to apply what you haven’t solidly learned.
HIS2 teachers were not available enough to answer questions in tutorial due to several reasons: 1) teacher absences, 2) high volume of students in tutorial (students having access to a teacher one at a time (!)) , 3) tutorial being only 2 times a week for 35 minutes each, ie limited time, teachers answering questions for one student at a time, leading to some students not able to get their questions answered and some having multiple questions to ask, not getting all answered 4) students needing to attend tutorial for other classes, 5) teacher absence right before tests and therefore unavailable to answer questions before the test, 6) new material starting each day, leading to new questions and therefore difficulty getting clarification on “older” topics, ie needing to move on without such clarification.
Lack of an Integrated Science textbook with sample questions and practice problems with solutions and good explanations.  (Many of us parents learned science this way, if there was anything missed or not understood from lecture, we had the chapter in the book to fall back on and solidify our knowledge.  In HIS2, there is not a specific chapter or problems to reference.--we see this as a big problem for the students.)
Lack of online Integrated Science resources
Lack of exposure to application type questions similar to what could show up on a test- Instructors could do a lot to help with this, provide problems and well worded solutions so that students can ponder and learn.  If the goal is not to have “gotcha” questions, the teachers have to help the students learn how to apply the knowledge they have on a given topic.
Problem with the actual tests: 1) Material that was on the test not sufficiently covered/taught in class, not in powerpoints nor in reading 2) Free response questions heavy on application where material was not explained well or not covered at all, 3) High number of students not knowing how to do problems, 4) Probable high percentage of fail rates on certain “bad questions” ie problems where most of these honor students got the problem wrong, 5) New material covered right before test without time to complete and teacher told students to “research this topic yourselves” and “yes, it will be on the test even though we didn’t cover it” 6) Mistakes in free response questions grading 7) Extra hard grading of free response questions [We believe this is why so many students failed or did poorly the exam]
Not sufficient access to tests: Students can only review tests in Tutorial.  Students cannot write any notes down to take with them, nor take pictures. No answer key is provided.  They are only to ask the teacher who is busy with multiple students. If a student missed say 10 multiple choice questions, 1) how are they to remember the correct answer/concept 2) how are they to garner enough of the teachers time to answer each of these questions and get the right answer and 3) if they don’t have enough time in Tutorial, are they just out of luck?

What we would like the administration and Science Department to do if you deem appropriate:

Review the data:
-Grades on the Final per HIS2 instructor
-Grades on the Final Free Response Questions per HIS2 instructor
-Grades on the Multiple Choice Questions per HIS2 instructor
-Pass Fail rate per question on the Final Free Response Questions per HIS2 instructor
-Pass Fail rate per question on the Final Multiple Choice Questions per HIS2 instructor
-Student grades in class both before and after final per HIS2 instructor

     2. If a majority of students are failing on a given question, should it be thrown out? [Here is where we believe instructors should be held accountable, the above data would show this.  If the administration wants to know if the information in this letter is correct or conjecture, the data would clearly show it.]

     3. Please review some of the Final Free Response questions that had a majority fail rate and trace back to the information needed to get that question correct in the course materials (if possible).  If this proves difficult, please realize why some of the questions were unfair to the students.

     4. Consider adjusting the percentage value of the Free Response Final questions to the total Final Exam grade.  It seems the students struggled the most on the Free Response Questions, ie, the averages on the Free Response Questions were much lower than the already low average on the Multiple Choice.  In one class the FRQ average was a D.  Instead of grading them 50:50 Free Response:Multiple Choice, consider, raising the value on the Multiple Choice.

Many of the students taking HIS2 are also in many other Honors and AP classes (some in AP Art History).  These other classes are tough, however they feel prepared and that the possess the tools to succeed.  Unfortunately, they don’t feel the same way HIS2. This might be something for the administration and Science Department to contemplate.

Many of these same students did much better in HIS1; did something drastically change between the two years?  Course Material?  Testing?  Instructors?

For some of our students, they started sophomore year with a keen interest in pursuing a career in Science.  We need to be honest with you, this class discouraged them.  We do not want to coddle our children, the real world will not be easy, you have to be able to withstand setbacks.  However, should high school science dissuade future scientists?  Is this where the weeding out should happen?

Finally, we’d like to say, we want our students to be challenged.  But there is a reality in which they exist.  College admissions loom large in their lives.  Sophomore and Junior grades certainly count and can help or hurt them.  If the goal of the testing/grading HIS2 was to separate the “men from the boys” come what may, then we will understand the motive accordingly.  However, if you agree that there is a shared responsibility in the teaching and learning of this material, it should not just be the students who are held accountable with a lesser grade.

We thank you again for taking the time to read and address our concerns.  We appreciate all you have done and will do.  We recognize that since we are choosing to remain anonymous it will be difficult to follow up and address this issue with us.  We will leave that challenge up to you.  Why do we want to remain anonymous?  We recognize that we are all human beings and that this sort of information/appeal/constructive criticism may sit the wrong way people (or it may not).  We do not want any individual students to be singled out now or in the future for bringing up these concerns.  We trust that you will resolve the matter in the appropriate way. 

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Thank you. Did they ever review the final grades and make adjustments?
 
No they didn't do anything to my knowledge