DAY TWO
Posted on Mon, Oct. 18, 2004
Learning is a low priority
CONCERN OVER ABSENTEEISM: VIOLENCE, TEACHER SHORTAGE KEEP INMATES OUT OF CLASS
By Brandon Bailey
Mercury News
STOCKTON - Students in the California Youth Authority have robbed, beaten and killed on the street. Veteran English teacher Virginia McGregor believes they still can learn something from the poetry of Robert Frost.
On a recent afternoon, McGregor was looking forward to teaching Frost's ``The Road Not Taken,'' a poem about making choices. She thought it might have special relevance at the Youth Authority's N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility, where her classroom, with its cheerful posters and orderly rows of desks, stands in sharp contrast to the glass-and-steel guard stations and razor-wire-topped fences outside.
But as her students filed quietly into class, a melee broke out. Two young men exchanged words, a desk scraped against the floor and suddenly they were toe-to-toe, pounding each other with their fists. Two more students started fighting before guards rushed in, doused the combatants with pepper spray and hauled them off in plastic restraints.
McGregor's classes were canceled for the next two days, until the chemical fumes had cleared from her room.
Similar incidents are all too common in the Youth Authority, where the mandated four-hour school day often is an elusive goal. As many as a third of the class periods at some Youth Authority schools were canceled last year. Up to 30 percent of students are absent on a given day, even though they are a captive population.
Experts in crime and juvenile justice say education is the single strongest factor proven to help young offenders change their lives while they are still maturing, before they become hardened adults. And the Youth Authority is legally required to provide a high school education for every ward who doesn't already have a diploma.
But it isn't working.
Spend any time at a Youth Authority school and the problems become clear:
The threat of violence is a constant distraction. Students are routinely kept out of class -- whether because of security lockdowns, teacher vacancies or a guard needing someone to mop the floor. Motivated teachers are frustrated and burning out.
And even though some have praised the agency for developing ambitious programs and curricula, teachers and administrators complain that the Youth Authority as a whole, from top officials to the guards in each living unit, gives education a low priority.
Moreover, the Youth Authority can't assess its instructional programs. The agency does not measure its graduation rate and does little to track overall student progress on proficiency tests.
Yet the results can affect all Californians.
``Every single one of these kids is coming back to a town near you,'' said longtime Youth Authority educator Jacqueline Cloud. ``Which do you want -- for them to be better, or worse, or the same as when they came in?''
Troubled district
� Low test scores amid violence
Under state law, the Youth Authority is supposed to operate like a public school district, with classroom buildings on the grounds of each of the state's eight youth prisons. Each ``campus'' has a principal, state-certified teachers and a roster of academic and vocational courses similar to schools on the outside.
But most school districts don't have teachers who wear body armor to class.
On the far side of the high-security Chaderjian complex from McGregor's room, Youth Authority teacher George Schmalhofer works in a building where 31 young men are held in isolation cells for fighting or other offenses. One afternoon this summer, while the clamor of shouts and curses echoed off bare walls, Schmalhofer adjusted the protective vest he is required to wear on that unit.
Moving from one cell to the next, Schmalhofer asked each ward if he wanted schoolwork. One youth dismissed him with an obscenity. Another had blocked open the food slot in his door -- Schmalhofer avoided him and the inmate next door, explaining that wards sometimes throw human waste, blood or semen through the slot.
The rest received a photocopied history chapter or a math worksheet, and a brief conversation through the crack alongside each locked, solid-metal door. Often it counts as an hour of instruction if the ward even partially completes the worksheet.
``I've been requesting work for months, and they just started bringing it,'' complained Jesus Vega, a 19-year-old from Stockton, speaking through his cell door.
After receiving a 10-minute algebra tutorial from Schmalhofer, the teenager, who was sent to the Youth Authority for car theft, said he found the work ``hard, but it's interesting.'' He said he had arrived on this living unit three weeks earlier. Before that, he had been in another building at the Chaderjian facility, where he and other wards were kept from regular classes for several months because of gang tensions.
Experts on prison education say students can still learn, and should be expected to try, even if they are kept out of regular class.
Youth Authority officials say they try to send teachers to the living units when wards are on lockdown. In recent weeks, they have begun bringing students out of their cells to work with a teacher like Schmalhofer in small groups for an hour a day. But many are still only talking with a teacher through a cell door for five or 10 minutes, twice a day.
A few doors down on the cellblock, 19-year-old Charles Miles of Richmond handed back a worksheet after finishing only a few of the math problems -- multiplication, division and fractions -- that Schmalhofer gave him.
Math doesn't interest him much, explained Miles, who was sent to the Youth Authority for possessing illegal firearms and landed in lockdown at Chaderjian for fighting. ``If you don't feel like doing no work, then obviously you're not going to do nothing.''
The Youth Authority's 3,000 high school students are probably the most difficult teaching challenges an educator could face. Many come from troubled families, belong to gangs or have violent tendencies. One in three has a diagnosed learning disability, and experts say it's likely that more are undiagnosed. One in four is learning English.
Youth Authority students consistently score low on state tests. This year, for example, high school students in the Youth Authority ranked no higher than the 10th percentile in reading, language arts and mathematics -- meaning their average scores were lower than those of 90 percent of students nationwide.
In large part, that's because most youths come into the Youth Authority with significant gaps in their schooling.
Yet many experts say incarceration can provide an excellent opportunity to focus on education. The negative influences that distracted young offenders from school on the outside -- drugs, gangs, a chaotic home life -- should be less of a problem in an institutional setting, said Carolyn Eggleston, a professor at the Center for Study of Correctional Education at California State University-San Bernardino.
Many juvenile offenders do not return to school after they are released. That means the Youth Authority might be the state's best and last chance to provide the education that can change a young offender's life.
Burning out
� Challenges surpass teachers' salaries
Back in McGregor's English classroom, Steven Hale, 19, insists he wants to do better.
Hale, a skinny, streetwise jokester in for armed robbery, likes to speak up in class. But when McGregor returned to the subject of poetry a week later -- after the pepper spray had cleared and her classes had resumed -- Hale seemed more interested in calling out wisecracks about bullets and marijuana than in discussing two roads diverging in a yellow wood.
McGregor, 55, was not about to let the class clown derail her lesson. Sternly, she called on several other students in rapid succession, asking each to interpret a line from Frost's poem about a man deciding which road to follow through a forest.
The others struggled to decipher the poem. But Hale was the first in the class to grasp its meaning, shouting in triumph that the verses were about choices in life.
Later, he reflected: ``I don't want to just pass this class, I want to really learn something.''
McGregor said that's her goal, too. ``I want my students to apply themselves. I want them to have critical thinking skills,'' she said. ``These guys make such impulsive choices, and literature gives them a different way to look at issues and decisions.''
Hale, who complained that most Youth Authority teachers do little to engage their students, spoke of McGregor with grudging respect.
Her manner is firm, but she shares stories about her childhood -- picking crops to help her family -- and discusses the importance of character and being a role model.
``She asks you if you understand things,'' Hale said. ``She's about the only person here who's willing to do that.''
Unfortunately, McGregor said that after 10 years of teaching for the Youth Authority, at a salary below what she could make in a neighboring public school, ``I don't think I'll be here much longer.''
The fight in her classroom reminded her of the constant risk to her safety. But she said she was mostly angry that her other students -- the ones who did not fight -- had to miss two days of her class.
McGregor said she felt isolated, with little support from administrators or the correctional staff.
The wards who started the fight had been assigned to McGregor's class only that week. Administrators did not tell her they were coming or warn her they might be dangerous, she said.
Correctional education experts recommend teachers and guards work as a team, even stationing officers in classrooms. The Youth Authority does not do that. There are procedures for guards and teachers to confer, but McGregor and others say that doesn't happen regularly.
Guards patrol outside classrooms, and wards must pass through a metal detector as they are marched single file to and from school. Rival gang members often are separated. But violence is always lurking around the corner.
``I've seen a lot of people assaulted,'' said Joaquin Ramirez, a 20-year-old student from Sacramento who was sent to the Youth Authority for armed robbery.
Ramirez has avoided trouble since renouncing membership in a Norte�o gang, but some former associates have not forgiven him.
``When they are out of lockdown,'' he said, ``I have to look over my shoulder.''
Tensions are especially high at Chaderjian, which houses wards who have had disciplinary problems at other facilities. But fights are routine at almost every Youth Authority institution.
``If a kid is in fear for his life, it's hard to study for a biology exam,'' said attorney Sara Norman of the Prison Law Office, a public interest group that has sued over conditions at the Youth Authority.
Bucking the odds
� Teen turns around -- with some help
Some students succeed in spite of the odds -- especially if they have help along the way.
Daniel Silva, a stocky 18-year-old from San Jose, was typing quietly one day in a social studies class at O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility, a Youth Authority site near Stockton that primarily houses wards younger than 19. Teacher Steve Maucieri had just finished a brisk lecture on global population and dwindling natural resources.
After several rocky years, Silva and his teachers said he's now on track to earn a high school diploma before his scheduled parole in January. ``If you want to learn here, you can do it,'' Silva said. ``I didn't care about school before, but now I do.''
Silva was sent to the Youth Authority at 14 for assault. He was affiliated with a gang and fought repeatedly with other wards. He spent weeks in an isolation cell and saw his sentence extended by 18 months.
But his teachers say Silva's attitude gradually changed. He left the gang, stopped fighting and started studying. He volunteered for several jobs, working as a clerk, library aide and janitor. Officials rewarded him with a two-month reduction in his sentence.
``When Daniel was 14, he was a bully,'' said Karen Lawyer, a special-education teacher who has worked with Silva in her ``resource classroom'' at Close. ``It took a long time, but he has made tremendous progress in reading, writing skills and math. His thinking has matured. He's growing up and thinking about life.''
Silva has had help in that process.
Maucieri is regarded by his colleagues and students as one of the Youth Authority's best instructors. He is energetic and, after 10 years in the Youth Authority, has a knack for scrounging up computers and other equipment for his class. He also is a classic role model for teenage boys: Like a good football coach, he's cool, confident and easygoing if they follow the rules, but a demanding taskmaster as well.
Because Silva has a mild learning disability, he also is eligible for one-on-one tutoring from Lawyer, a nurturing figure who occasionally rewards good students on their birthdays by bringing them burgers and fries from a fast-food restaurant outside the prison fence. And when Maucieri missed work because of a back injury last June, Silva could go to Lawyer's classroom while Maucieri's other students had to stay back in their dorms.
But Silva said his biggest inspiration came from his mother, who died last year after a lengthy illness. She had urged him to change, and before she died, he promised he would.
``I want to keep my promise,'' he said. ``I just really want to graduate before I go home.''
Funding woes
� Too few teachers for state ratios
When Youth Authority teachers call in sick, their students miss school, too. Some sites cancel 20 percent to 25 percent of class periods in a month because of teacher absences and vacancies.
Officials say they can't send wards to other classrooms, because the rules allow no more than 18 wards in regular classes and 10 in special-education classes. The rules are based on formulas set by the Legislature and written into contracts with the teachers union.
But even though the Youth Authority spends more than $71,000 a year on each ward, officials say they have never had the funds to hire enough teachers to cover regular classes, visit students on lockdown and provide substitutes for absences and vacations.
Teachers and administrators defend the class-size limits, saying students learn more in smaller classes, while larger numbers are a security risk. But as a result, the Youth Authority allows some wards to miss class.
``There's no public school in California that tells students: `I'm sorry, we're going to send you home today because your teacher is out sick,' '' acknowledged Robert Block-Brown, who was the Youth Authority's No. 2 education official until he left over the summer.
The Youth Authority would need to hire 150 teachers to accommodate all its students under the current class-size formulas, Block-Brown said. But that's a moving target, he added, because many current instructors are approaching retirement age. And it's difficult to recruit teachers because Youth Authority salaries have fallen 10 percent to 20 percent behind other school districts.
Absenteeism
� Little tracking of who misses class
Even when classes aren't canceled, the Youth Authority still has a problem getting wards to school.
The reasons vary. One student was called out of McGregor's lecture on Frost to get a haircut. Another missed Maucieri's talk on pollution for group counseling. A guard at Chaderjian let one ward stay in his cell because the youth just didn't like his teacher.
``It is evident that education is not the primary focus during the school day,'' a team of consultants said in a report commissioned by the state last year, after calculating that the absentee rate at Youth Authority schools ranged from 20 percent to 30 percent.
Youth Authority officials say they are only beginning to understand the extent of the absenteeism. One audit found officials were overstating attendance at a Youth Authority school in Southern California last year, while another review found inaccurate class counts at three facilities.
Officials said they adopted a new system this year that is designed to help them track attendance trends and the reasons for student absences.
And even though the Youth Authority has claimed to have a policy of ``no diploma, no parole,'' officials admit they don't know what percentage of students succeed or fail to finish school before they are released.
The Youth Authority does report that several hundred students earn diplomas or General Education Development certificates each year. But many wards and their families complain that enrollment delays and paperwork snafus make it difficult for them to earn credits they need to graduate.
In their report last year, the state consultants praised the Youth Authority for drawing up individual graduation plans for each new ward entering the system. But after reviewing a sample of student records, the team reported that one in four was failing to complete courses on schedule -- because of security lockdowns, teacher shortages and other obstacles.
For an earlier study, in 2000, state officials checked the records of 100 wards who had been ordered to complete high school before parole. Only half had done so.
Tough tactics
� Cages once used for problem wards
When she was named principal at Chaderjian in 2003, veteran Youth Authority educator Glenda Pressley said she often found just 70 wards, from a student population of more than 400, were in classrooms on an average day.
Pressley said she began lobbying managers and guards at Chaderjian to get more students to school. She hoped to reach 250 this fall -- still far below 100 percent.
But some teachers accuse administrators of acting hastily to ward off outside criticism and lawsuits.
Experts recommend a gradual transition for students who have been locked down -- such as bringing them out in small groups first.
``When you force students into classes, even though they are too dangerous to be there, education is just not going to happen,'' said Jim Boyle, teachers union leader at Chaderjian.
Unlike their counterparts in public schools, Youth Authority officials say they don't have the luxury of expelling problem students.
Wards who get in trouble can be locked down or transferred; the most troublesome wind up at Chaderjian. But there is no place to send them after that.
That's what gave rise to the controversial use of ``cages'' -- steel-mesh booths, just big enough to fit one student seated at a standard school desk. Prodded by an earlier lawsuit to bring students out of their cells, the Youth Authority began using cages at Chaderjian and other facilities in 1998. No other state uses them.
Some teachers defend the cages, saying they made it possible to sit in the same room with violent wards or members of rival gangs. But others say the cages became a cruel substitute for more effective, but time-consuming, strategies.
``They just took the easy way out, and supported an outrageously dehumanizing system,'' charged Sue Burrell, an attorney with the Youth Law Center, which has sued the Youth Authority over its educational programs in the past.
The Youth Authority's director, Walter Allen, announced this spring that the cages would no longer be used for teaching. Instead, officials devised a plan for putting as many as five wards in a locked classroom with a teacher and a correctional officer standing guard inside.
That's what teachers like Schmalhofer are starting to do. But the plan has only gradually been put into use because of staffing shortages and security concerns, so some students are still being taught in their cells.
Frustrated youths
� Time on lockdown seen as a waste
Firman Bingham, an 18-year-old gang member from South Central Los Angeles, knows what it's like to be taught through his cell door. He had spent eight months on lockdown over the past year for fighting.
On a recent morning at Chaderjian, however, Bingham was back in a regular classroom. When teacher Krista Johnson, a young, energetic temporary hire, asked Bingham to read a newspaper article aloud for the class, he sat up and responded in a clear, confident voice.
When the moment passed, Bingham slumped back in his chair. After nearly three years in the Youth Authority, Bingham would go home at the end of the month, though he still needed a few more classes to earn his diploma.
Bingham complained that his time on lockdown had been wasted. Even before that, he said, a math teacher awarded him credits when he didn't do any work. And when Johnson was out sick the other day, the entire class had to stay back in their cells.
``I don't think the YA takes school seriously,'' Bingham said. ``They just give us school because they have to.''