the students in their own recitation classes. There were timing and con-
tractual issues involved, but in most cases the program was able to support
this change. Students took the science lab more seriously and cutting was
reduced. The science supervisor, working with his teachers, also made use
of the flexibility permitted in the science curriculum to revamp the order
and content of the labs so that they meshed better with the classroom in-
struction and were more interesting to students.
A complaint often heard from principals is that it is unfair to demand that
students pass more and more standardized promotional examinations and at
the same time expect teachers to provide students with a “real” education.
These complaints are not new. When the small “themed” school movement
began in New York City, many such schools were exempt from state exit
exams. When the state department of education decided it was going to re-
quire all schools to meet the testing requirements, there was an uproar from
the small-school principals: “Such exams are not part of our mission.” “We
provide students with an education that goes far beyond what these tests
require.” “Our specialized curriculum will be destroyed.”
They went outside the box to protest, obtained some parent support, and
tried to overturn the plan. It was a wasted effort. A state education depart-
ment is a bureaucracy responding to pressures from the state legislature for
empirical evidence of student achievement. For better or worse, they believe
exams provide this proof. It was a fight these principals could not win.
Mr. Thelen in his academic-vocational school could have made similar
arguments. Many of the students in the vocational areas were not going
on to a four-year college, yet they had an academic curriculum designed
expressly for this purpose. These students neither needed nor wanted
three years of math and science. When these expanded requirements were
implemented during Mr. Thelen’s second year at the helm, principals of
similar schools cried foul. How could the students complete their voca-
tional sequence? Again, this fight could not be won.
Mr. Thelen knew that academics were a given, so he changed the vo-
cational sequence to provide flexibility to those students needing more
academic classes to meet graduation requirements. Students in occupa-
tional programs would take one period of vocational education in the
ninth year instead of two; two periods in the tenth year instead of three;
and two or three (Mr. Thelen took a three-period class and divided it into
Stay within the Box and Remember—Life Is Unfair 179