Varsity athlete chooses AP class over Gym, loses diploma
Skipped gym class costs student diploma
Isabel Gottlieb is a dedicated student. She has varsity letters in three sports, plays trumpet in the school band and loaded down her senior year with advanced placement and honors courses. An administrative error made when she transferred to Bow High School (Bow School District) forced her to decide between an AP course and gym class. She chose education over the redundant gym class so the school will not permit her to graduate.
The missing credit wasn’t caught by the school last spring when Gottlieb’s schedule was set. The class in question is called BEST, or Building Essential Skills for Tomorrow, and is required for all Bow students to graduate.
At the Seattle high school Gottlieb attended before moving to Bow before her junior year, gym requirements often were waived for students in varsity sports. But those waivers aren’t something Bow High School is willing to accept.
…
Both Gottlieb and her mother said the school suggested dropping either band, chorus, AP biology or calculus. But she and her mother decided sacrificing any of those would have diminished the quality of Gottlieb’s education.“I’m trying to get into college and someone isn’t going to want to see someone drop an AP biology class a month into the year in order to pick up P.E.,” Gottlieb said.
The school isn’t likely to grant a waiver and BEST is not offered in summer school. Gottlieb was accepted into Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and that college is proving to be far more accommodating than the high school. They are aware of her situation and will accept her as a student without a high school diploma so long as she achieves a GED.
Gottlieb said that she already has taken the practice test and, once she hears back on that, will schedule a time to take the official version of the high school equivalency test.
Meanwhile, her mother, Ashley Warner, is planning a “non-graduation” party for her daughter.
“We realized that not graduating wasn’t the end of the world,” Warner said. “But it took a long time to come to that conclusion.”
The rules trump education at Bow High School. They determined that it is more important for a student athlete to take remedial gym classes than to actually prepare for college.
Contact Information:
Principal George Edwards
Assistant Principal Gay Longnecker
Athletic Director Jim Kaufman
Superintendent Kathleen Holt
School Board Co-Chair Dr.Stephen Elgert
School Board Co-Chair Nick Harding
School Boardmember Pansy Bloomfeld
School Boardmember Warren Fargo
School Boardmember Deb McCann
(Tip credit to Fred AE)
I saw this on Yahoo! Its unbelievable that someone who is a cross-country runner, lacross player, and more, would need to take a lousy class called ”Building Essential Skills for Tomorrow”, when she so clearly has built skills elsewhere for today and tomorrow.
At least let her test out! It is an incredible shame when schools put adherence to a simple rule ahead of education.
Rules sure are a pain in the butt.
It really sucks when when you have to follow them. It’s even worse when you choose not to and you find out that there are consequences.
If she wants a degree from that school, then she has to meet their requirements. That’s how it works. Fortunatley, she does not need a degree from that school, so it looks like all is well, eh?
The point is that the school has lost site of its goal in this case and is enforcing a rule simply for the sake of enforcing a rule. An argument can certainly me made for the benefit of a physical education class and I don’t think anybody would have an objection to it being mandatory.
However, she has met and exceeded anything offered by a basic gym class. Basically she finished PE303 and they want to hold her back because she skipped PE101. A reasonable administration would look back to its actual goals (which are supposed to be educating students) and work to support them.
The BEST course doesn’t sound like a gym class; it sounds like the senior year health class my school had, which was handled by the P.E. dept. as part of the health curriculum. It was a load of new age, touchy feely indoctrination that wouldn’t stand up to a determined First Amendment challenge. If that’s what’s happening here, she should sue.
The point here is that the courses required for graduation are listed. When you transfer colleges, the same thing happens. When you switch majors, the same thing happens, too. Sometimes, you go back and take lower level classes. If you expect this young lady to grow up and join the real world, then this is the way it is. Good to have her aboard.
If you want to talk about ‘the goal’ in an idealized fashion, we can, but then the school should subjectivley just decide when each student has met the goal and is ready to move on. There is a reason that a standardized cirriculum is in place. Why do you suppose doctors go through medical school and then a residency? Should we not just say (for the bright students), we figure you’ve met the goal go ahead and be a practicing doctor?
For a board of individuals to determine when your children have met the goal according to their subjective standard would raise mass public outcry and lawsuits would abound.
Bad idea. Standard cirriculum — good idea.
g
Generally speaking, yes. A required set of base classes is a good idea. However, there are specific cases when the idea falls apart. This is one of them.
The college transfer case is an excellent example of a better way to do things. If she had transferred colleges and found herself missing a required basic course she could challenge it or apply for an exemption based on her transferred records. This high school is not willing to make this common sense accomodation.
Nobody is asking the school to make a subjective evaluation here. The objective evaluation is already very plain.
Garrett: There’s more to it than that. She transferred from another school where she had long ago take the equivalent class. Bow had previously accepted the transfer credit, then they retroactively changed their rule. A reasonable school would have clear standards as to what does and doesn’t trasfer so that the transferring student knows up front, instead of waiting just before graduation when it’s too late for the student to do anything about it. A reasonable school would also allow a student to test out of a class that the student is clearly over-qualified for. Bow did neither.
What this really does is expose how increasingly irrelavant a high school diploma is in America these days. If colleges will accept students without diplomas (which they will), and companies will hire college graduates without bothering to check on their high school diploma (which many of them will), then what’s the use? Under those conditions, any bright, well-prepared student would be best served to drop out after their junior year and go straight to college.
Jim, Garret, it’s even worse than that. Notice that the quoted article says the school itself missed that they hadn’t signed her up for the requirement–and then went back and tried to force her to take the class. They are now penalizing HER for THEIR mistake.
Another example of progress being sacrificed for the sake of a process/policy.
Well she isn’t going to that school now, so the school can just fuck off, huh? But having rules for the sake of having rules has long been a staple of public schools. I had to deal with pointless rules and requirements when I was in HS. There was no practical purpose for them, except because they were already there and probably are still there.
I have an idea. Let each student and their parents decide what classes they need to take to get a diploma (it is NOT a degree) from a high school. I would hate to impose society’s rules upon the student. I certainly don’t want to stifle them!
What a crock! The girl knew what the rules were — she had to take the course — she didn’t.
barry
http://www.bownet.org/bforbes/BEST%20HOME%20PAGE/bowcurriculum.htm
Barry, Garret, et al, The Plot Thickens!
B.E.S.T. is a class they are REQUIRED to take at least THREE YEARS (’with an option for a fourth year’).
They (the school) forgot to enroll her, and now they (the ones who forgot) aren’t enforcing the rule upon themselves that they HAVE to teach this, yet are enforcing the rule upon her (to her detriment).
I think all in all, if you look at the curriculum found at the link above, anyone could see that she probably has the experience that she could have gotten in B.E.S.T. As the saying goes, ”don’t let B.E.S.T. get in the way of better.”
I rest my case.
“Rules are Rules.” — Battlecry of the bureaucratic idiot.
I just went through this same situation. I am a high school student in central Illinois. I had waived P.E. class during class sign up in the spring of my junior year, and in its place, I signed up for an AP class. However, in the middle of this April, the school guidance counselor met with me to inform me that my P.E. waiver meant that I had to do track. Unfortunately, this was half-way through the track season. Moreover, it was half-way through fourth quarter of my senior year.
He told me that I had to drop one of my classes — which include: AP Calculus, AP English, AP Anatomy, AP Physics, Microbiology, AP Chemistry, AP Spanish, and Band — in order to take P.E. I was not about to drop a class for P.E. That would be ridiculous, not to mention that would mean taking a 0% in the dropped class (affecting my GPA and class rank, which is top 10), regardless of the fact of not having lower than a 97% in any of my classes. Of the eight classes, Microbiology and Band were the only feasible classes to drop.
However, I did not want my attempts at being Valedictorian to end due to P.E. I ended up talking to the Athletic Director and working it out with the track coach to allow me to join the team, stay in my classes, and not receive a 0%.
Both my situation and hers could have easily been prevented if those in charge would have done their job when they should have. My school’s guidance counselor should have come to me at the start of second semester, not the middle of fourth quarter, to make sure my schedule followed procedures. Unfortunately for me, he was (and still is) lazy and decided to put off doing his job. As well, her school should have examined her schedule and confronted her about it before the start of the year and straightened the situation out then.
The missing credit wasn’t caught by the school last spring when Gottlieb’s schedule was set.
In other words, the school staff screwed up by not engaging in due diligence when she transferred in. They did not engage in the standard practice of ensuring all incoming seniors — especially transfer students — have all credits required for graduation.
Then, when they caught their error late in the game, they wanted the student to sacrifice a rigorous academic course or an advanced performing arts class for a class that they should have hasd highlighted to begin with.
Having screwed up, the school then engages in rote legalism to prevent her from getting a diploma rather than making a legally permissible exception to assist her in getting the best possible education.
And no, a waiver would not get them sued by anyone else — unless there is a lot more incompetence among the school staff.
Barry and Garrett:
You are both using a logical fallacy. “The rules are the rules” doesn’t cut it.
http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/accident.htm
Definition:
A general rule is applied when circumstances suggest that an
exception to the rule should apply.
Examples:
(i) The law says that you should not travel faster than 50
kph, thus even though your father could not breathe, you
should not have travelled faster than 50 kph.
Garret and Barry remind me of the guys who were handling my class admissions in college. Each needed authorization from the other to carry-out the class sign-up process, but neither would grant the other one the authorization without having the other issue authorization first.
I was caught in the middle and nothing was accomplished until I took my case to a third party. Sadly, both of the admissions guys in question were in love with themselves for knowing that they were following the rules.
Personally, I believe the school system should not be in the business of promoting sports and physical education should be abolished. The time and resources could be better spent on real subjects that matter.
If this girl’s high school is anything like mine, the student could request classes, but in the end it was the administration the final decision.
Considering she is a high school student, she should have been enrolled in the class even if she didn’t request it. That, however, didn’t happen.
Instead of being legalistic about it, the school could (should) have offered one of the B.E.S.T. instructors to evaluate the young lady to see if she needed the class (in the learning sense, NOT the bookkeeping sense), and then waived her if she didn’t need it.
(Just as an aside, if this situation occurred in a college instead of a high school, my response would be that the young lady should have kept her units straight.)
Abnormal, you’re adjacent to a great point there. I’d be willing to bet the administrators at this girl’s school realized she was way smarter than any of them would ever hope to be. (Let’s face it, really, really intelligent people are not drawn to work in grinding bureaucracies.) So, in their passive-aggressive way, the bureaucratic doorknobs were able to assert aw-thorry-tah and try and kick the legs out from under a bright, promising kid and get a sick little thrill while doing it.
Rhymes With Right (and the other school staff),
Is the school responsible for making sure you sign up for all the right classes? Do they not give you the book with the requirements and some guidance?
With whom does the final responsibility lie?
To everyone who is crying foul:
Crying foul because big brother didn’t make you sign up for the class is just terrible. Have some responsibility for your own actions, people. Would you also sue the government for not making you wear a saftey belt in your car? Would you sue for not making you contribute to your 401K?
Seriously… you’re given the graduation requirements. Meet them or don’t and you may have some guidance, but don’t try and hold someone else responsible for your lack of action.
”don’t try and hold someone else responsible for your lack of action.” I would say this to the school administrators for missing her requirements. BEST is a 3-year required class. She hasn’t even been there 3 years. How do they propose to require 3 years of her? Somehow they waived that, yet still are standing firm on this year. Incredible…..
Educating while Ignorant
Isabel Gottlieb is a straight A student at Bow High School in Seattle, Washington. She plays the trumpet in the…
Garret, read the article again. She’s accepted to college for this fall, so she’s a senior. The school missed it when her schedule was made out last spring, when she was a junior. That means she missed taking BEST her senior year, which, it appears is the only year she attended this school. The school website says the senior year of BEST is ELECTIVE.
Furthermore, perusing the BEST curriculum indicates it does indeed include ideological indoctrination, thus making the requirement of the course unconstitutional under the First Amendment. There are also a lot of kids who are excused from PE on the basis of disabilities. Their opportunity to load up on AP classes, if denied to her, is discriminatory.
Furthermore, the whole requirement for PE could be litigated against - you have a RIGHT to be an obese, sedentary slob in this country.
Rhymes With Right (and the other school staff),
Is the school responsible for making sure you sign up for all the right classes? Do they not give you the book with the requirements and some guidance?
With whom does the final responsibility lie?
Actually, you idiot, it lies with the folks whose job it is to ensure the students are signed up for the proper classes and on track for graduation — the guidance counselors, whose professional responsibility it is to perform their job competently.
But then again, I suppose you hold the patient responsible when the doctor misreads the x-ray, too — after all, the patient should have looked him/herself just to make sure.
Rhymes with Right,
Hey, thanks for calling me an idiot. This is close to home and heated, but please refrain from personal attacks. I don’t recall attacking you personally. I was addressing you because you’re a staff member and I thought you would have a better perspective on the matter.
Of course I don’t think a patient is responsible for reading X-rays. Don’t be silly.
When you are given the graduation requirements, it is then your responsibility to make sure you meet them and no one else’s. I think that is the point we differ on. Perhaps we’ll have to agree to disagree on this point.
Some people think the state should be responsible for their medical care and for their retirement and for a minimum standard of living. Some countires (socialist) tax very heavily and provide those services. I’m not suggesting that you beleive this way, I only point this out as an illustration that there are differing points of view as to where personal responsiblity lie.
Some folks think someone else is responsible for making sure you do what you need to do and some folks think that, given the requirements, you should make sure you get it done yourself. I fall into the latter category.
Garrett, let’s try this one more time, since you haven’t been paying attention:
When you are given the graduation requirements, it is then your responsibility to make sure you meet them and no one else’s.
That is, of course, assuming that you are in fact given such requirements, and that the school simply isn’t making them up as they go along.
Is the school responsible for making sure you sign up for all the right classes?
If they refuse to tell the student what the right classes are, then yes.
Do they not give you the book with the requirements and some guidance?
I have never seen or heard of a public high school that did. In my experience, most public high schools have no set standards beyond the bare minimums that the state sets. It’s completely up to the whim of the principal and/or the local school board; they can change the standards retroactively at an time, and most high schools can and do set different standards for different groups of students.
And to Quincy:
(Just as an aside, if this situation occurred in a college instead of a high school, my response would be that the young lady should have kept her units straight.)
You are absolutely right, and that is one of the major differences between a university and a high school: Most universities are serious about what they do. Many high schools aren’t. At a university, when you enter you are given a catalog that spells out the graduation requirements for your major, as well as a guarantee that these are the requirements that will remain in force for you while you are there. (With certain exceptions, such as changing majors or going over a time limit.) The university student need not fear that his/her graduation requirements will change drastically one semester before they are to graduate.
None of this is true for high schools. What’s also not true is that high school students aren’t adults. In most high schools, the counselor who sets a student’s curriculum is an authority figure who is in a position to discipline a student for any and all offenses. The counselor is in themselves (or in conjunction with school administration) the final authority on what any particular student needs to graduate, and the student, not being a mature person, will and must look up to and respect the counselor’s word. There is no catalog. If the counselor decides to wield power in a capricous manner, there is nothing the student can do. In the bad old days, counselors didn’t do this because parents could rein them in, but that check and balance is not there anymore.
Cousin Dave,
While I apprecieate the sentiment and I believe it is heartfelt, where do you get your statistics from?
My information is coming from high school faculty members. I am currently attached to one and asked her about how graduation requirements work.
Please, for my sake, document your sources. I’m about to explode from curosity. You’re making some pretty bold statements! I’d love for you to show me I’m wrong…
I believe he’s getting it (at least the first part, not the response to Quincy) from the article itself.
Garret — Quit talking to me like a 15-year-ol who thinks he is in charge and I won’t find a need to speak to you like one.
But my main point is that it is the role of the guidance counselors to tell the students these things. THAT IS THEIR JOB. I’ve seen the books that my district gives to students at the high school — I have a difficult time explaining the requirements to my students when they ask questions. Given that 1/3 of the parents at my school are non-native English speakers, I can see how many students would be unable to depend on them. On the other hand, when the counselors put the schedules for the following year together (a process that begins in January for the following August), they have a file folder on each student with a check-list for each student, showing if they have met the requirements for each of the three different sets of graduation requirements dictated by the state of Texas. If a kid is missing a credit, they should be called in before the end of school in May to let them know that there is a problem. That something like this didn’t happen at this girl’s school tells me that either someone failed to do their job OR the school has no safety -net to make sure that students actually make academic progress and graduate (which is, after all, a major goal).
Rhymes with Right,
I started by asking four questions of you since you have an insiders view. If those simple questions make you feel righetous and you can rationalize personal attacks and making snap judgements, so be it.
Remember, you don’t know me. You’ve only seen prose in small paragraghs that don’t convey body language, mannerism, or tone.
I never saw my guidance counselor in high school. I suppose I had one. We were given the guidelines for graduation and I met them. It was part of the responsibility that came with the ability to choose my own classes. I liked it better than having the school choose my classes for me.
I’m done speaking on this thread. You may judge me if you like, I’ll spare you the same treatment. You may insult me or attack me and rationalize it in whatever way makes you feel good.
I’ve said my peace.
Rhymes, Garret is right that it’s the student’s responsibility. Every high school I’ve ever seen has provided the requirements, and in this day and age, I’d be very surprised if there’s a state that doesn’t publish them online. Neither I nor any of my siblings ever needed a counselor’s help to select courses, and quite frankly, from skimming your website, I’m shocked that you would say the things you do. Counselors are the vanguard of the leftist indoctrination and usurpation of parental rights/responsibilities in our public schools.
That said, she was a transfer, and it appears this is an extra, district imposed, politically motivated requirement, and one that it is not the public schools’ place to impose. There are many reasons to oppose the administration’s actions, but the idea that she was correct to blindly places HER future in counselors’ hands is not one of them.
Dweeb -
If the student had complete control over her schedule, which I highly doubt (see my previous comment), and was informed when she was signing up for classes last spring that her PE waivers would not be accepted and she would need to take a year of BEST to graduate, then she could be reasonably at fault.
I’m willing to bet, though, that the administration wasn’t clear about their refusal of her PE waivers at the time she signed up for classes, and only made the decision clear later, in which case it would be very much their fault.
Garrett:
I’ve said my peace.
Well, I’ve said my piece too, and your “peace” explains a lot. Hang around with a lot of educators, you say?
It looks to me like the girl and her family dug their heels in. They were told a month into the school year about the problem. That is early enough in my opinion. She could have EASILY dropped chorus or band for the B.E.S.T. class. When a student refuses to abide by the rules when they are given ample time to do so, what else is the school to do?? The school made the right decision.
First off, she is not a Straight A student. She is not a 3 season (playing) varsity athlete, but a bench warmer. She did not play varsity lacrosse in Washington as her school only has a club level team (look it up).
She had the “gym” class she was supposed to take on her schedule in May of 2004; way before senior year started. The school did not screw up. It is so easy to say that, and everyone just believes it. Read other articles in other local papers, and you will get all the facts; (Concord Monitor, Bow Times). This article was written by a man who did not get both sides of the story.
It is a NH state standard that she had to meet 1 credit of gym and .25 credits of health. She did not have the state requirements, and she didn’t have the Bow HS requirements; that is why they could not offer her a diploma. She had waivers from her school for PE, that is not a credit. She got the waivers because of her courseload there, not because she was a varsity athlete.
She took BEST 11 when she was a junior in eleventh grade, and could have taken BEST 12 as a senior, but resfused to change her courses( BAND)around in order to make it fit. That is why the school gave her an option of taking BEST 9 or 10 in place of 12. She was in the class for a while, then dropped out of it, because she did not want to take it.
Yes, the internet is a great way to post your opinion, but before you come to an opinion, realize there are always more facts to a story than you may see in one article in a paper that catches the eye of an AP reporter and gets syndicated.
is it lessons discrimination? I’d choose sport but this isn’t obligatory for the rest of the world I think.