Today in our special multipart series on the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) we'll take a closer look at two of the APAAS homework assignments themselves.
One recurring assignment, the Reader's Workshop, asks students to analyze and write about a book they've read. Although this may sound good in theory, in practice the questions students must address are far beyond the capabilities of even very bright fourth graders. For example, few nine-year-olds can understand what is meant by "Explain how the growth and development of this character contributes to the rising action of the plot" or "What techniques does the author use to create a mood in the setting that makes the plot more convincing?" Such questions are more suited to students in junior high or even high school; fourth graders simply do not have the level of abstract thought necessary to answer these sorts of questions.
Another recurring assignment, Earth Watch, instructs students to read a newspaper article about a debatable issue, summarize the article's content, present an argument mentioned or inherent in the article, report how their parent feels about the issue, and present their own opinion, providing reasons for and against one position or the other. Again, this APAAS assignment is difficult, if not impossible, for nine-year-olds to do without considerable parental help. Simply figuring out what a newspaper article is saying, much less sifting through arguments and presenting logically reasoned positions, is often over their heads.
APAAS assignments repeatedly fail to take into consideration the developmental levels and needs of upper elementary students. Even worse, at a time when children should be becoming more independent, the nature of the assignments forces students to become more dependent on parents for help. At the annual APAAS information night, where parents listen to a general presentation of the APAAS program and then disperse to different classrooms to ask questions of APAAS teachers from the various sites, parents are advised that deciding to apply to and enroll their child in APAAS is a "family affair." Being an APAAS student doesn't just up the demands for students—it increases them dramatically for parents as well, sabotaging any efforts to increase their children's independence.
Although it's true that, over time, students adjust (for better or worse) to the unreasonable homework demands and gradually become more capable of completing these tasks on their own or with less parental help, the program in its most rigorous form is detrimental to children's sense of self-efficacy and, ultimately, self-esteem. Every year some students become clinically depressed in the program; on occasion, some even become suicidal.
Next week we'll examine the APAAS program's effectiveness, after which we'll explore why parents enroll their children in APAAS and who is likely to be most (and least) satisfied with the program.
