MPR: The Profile Survives

The Profile Survives
By Tim Pugmire
September 1, 1999
Part of MPR Online's "Back to School '99" Series.

Minnesota schools begin a second year of classes this week under the graduation standards system, known as the Profile of Learning.

The complex system of applied-learning requirements was expected to be dumped or dramatically altered during the legislative session, but neither happened. Now, school districts and teachers are expected to push ahead and make the Profile work.

SECONDARY TEACHERS FROM throughout the Anoka-Hennepin School District packed Champlin Park High School last week for a day-long workshop on the second year implementation of the state graduation standards. Despite the political uncertainty of the Profile of Learning, the state's third largest district has moved full throttle to adopt the system, which stresses hands-on, applied learning over textbook memorization. Pat Griffith is a seventh-grade math teacher at Roosevelt Middle School in Blaine, and one of the district's many Profile cheerleaders.

Griffith: The standards are where it's at. The standards are what children really need. The days, thankfully, of a page in the book and worksheets are over. Not to say we don't occasionally remediate by using paper and pencil, but children at the age I teach do not learn well when it's all paper and pencil. My math classrooom, the classrooms in the school I teach, look a lot more like science classrooms.

Under the Profile of Learning, students must show what they know in various subjects through projects or performances. This year's 10th graders are the first students who must meet the standards in 24 of 48 subject areas before graduation. The lesson plans devised to meet those standards are known as "performance packages."

Ken Meyer, a science teacher at Coon Rapids High School, says the new hands-on system challenges all students. He says he'll have fewer A students this year, because memorization alone no longer gets the job done.

Meyer: As a matter of fact, the thing I'm finding is my students who used to get maybe Cs in science and really didn't like science, they're suddenly beginning to bloom. Because they can't memorize, but when I do a performance package they know how to do it they just don't know the terminology for it, and they do wonderful.

One reason for the the pro-Profile sentiments in Anoka-Hennepin is the school district's early involvement of teachers in shaping the new system. Teachers there, as in many districts, helped write the the lesson plans for meeting the standards. Others districts chose instead to push state-written performance packages into their classrooms, causing resentment and confusion among teachers, who found the required assignments too hard to understand.

But even in the Profile-embracing school districts, there's plenty of dissatisfaction. One common complaint is the system demands too much record keeping. Detailed files are needed to track which standards students have met and what areas need more work. Mike Riha, a math teacher at Coon Rapids High School, says he will need more planning time this school year.

Riha: Some of our standards and some of our assessment packages have to be done so late in the year that people are putting in 18 hour days trying to grade the packages, do a fair assessment of the students' work and then get them on the deadline for report cards and recording.

Teachers have also raised concerns about the dual-grading requirement. In addition to the traditional letter grades for coursework, teachers must grade Profile of Learning standards on a scale of one to four. And the letters and numbers don't match. State education officials say they've heard the complaints and are looking for ways to address the problems. But any changes won't come until the next school year.

Christine Jax, commissioner of the Department of Children, Families and Learning, says her message to the legislature in 2000 will be the same as last time: The Profile should be repaired, not replaced.

Jax: So I think you'll hear us come back and say that we want to continue to work on some of the language around the performance packages. You might hear us come back and support fewer content standards in particular grade levels, like third and fifth. Unless we find that districts have worked like crazy over the summer to help those particular grades and those particular teachers who are having trouble.

Jax sent letters to every Minnesota school district last spring outlining ways to pursue waivers from certain Profile of Learning requirements. But only two districts have made informal inquiries. Jax says she thinks it shows districts are learning to live with the Profile as it moves into its second year.

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