As the demands of No Child Left Behind Act shake up school districts across the country, schools in the Napa Valley are stressing the importance of a curriculum based on academic accountability.

The goal as educators head into the new school year, said Napa Valley Unified School District Superintendent John Glaser, is the same as it has been in past years — that is, “to give students the interventions they need in a timely fashion to prepare them for more challenging and rigorous curriculum down the line.”

In other words, educators must go out of their way to teach seminars and special classes, and to offer one-on-one tutoring to help students prepare for the academic tests on which both schools and students are judged.

The notion, he said, is to raise the bar in every academic area, but with the school district in Program Improvement — the No Child equivalent of probation — “high-stakes accountability has us focusing ever increasingly on math and language arts.”

As a result, elementary, middle and high schools are introducing and expanding programs designed to help meet these goals. The biggest change for the new school year, said Elena Toscano, NVUSD assistant superintendent of instruction, is the number and availability of reading programs for students.

NVUSD elementary and middle schools will expand programs already in place, training additional teachers in the programs, as well as adopting a new program of intensive reading instruction. High schools will offer a greater variety of reading programs than ever before.

“We’re reforming the way we’re doing business,” said Toscano.

Previously offered at Harvest Middle School, Napa and Vintage high schools, an intensive reading intervention program called Read 180 will now be offered at all middle schools and high schools in the district, mainly for grades seven through 10. Read 180, which Toscano calls the “Cadillac of reading programs,” employs what is called a lexiled reading model, meaning that each student reads a different text based on their own individual reading level.

Ninth and 10th grade students who are not proficient in reading, but who may not need as intensive a program as Read 180, will be offered an anthology-based reading program designed to help them reach proficiency and pass the Exit Exam, said Toscano.

This new program of study has sparked an often heated debate, with critics of the program insisting that the reading curriculum should incorporate full texts as opposed to excerpts.

Vintage High Principal Eric Schneider said many English teachers are opposed to the program, but that they will find ways to make it work. “This is not something the English teachers said, ‘Hey, we’d love to switch to this new textbook,’” he said. “It came as a mandate indirectly through the state ... They may not be happy with the direction the district has chosen to go, but at the end of the day, they’re giving their best efforts, which is pretty doggone good.”

Toscano, on the other hand, said an anthology-based curriculum is necessary for some students. “You have to teach kids the basic skills of reading before they can enjoy fully a book like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ with its idiomatic text and dialogue. That’s not a book that really teaches you to improve reading.” Toscano notes that some short complete texts will be integrated into the program, including “Romeo and Juliet” in ninth grade and “Julius Caesar” in 10th.

Schneider said the emphasis on accountability for students below proficiency level is not coming at the expense of students who are achieving. “We do have the most noticeable area of focus for all of NVUSD for kids that struggle because we are a district that is in Program Improvement, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t investing resources in kids who are achieving.”

Upvalley changes

The trend toward accountability is also affecting Calistoga Joint Unified School District, which is shifting this year from a completely interdisciplinary humanities program to what Superintendent Jeff Johnson called a “modified interdisciplinary approach.” This shift, he said, is the direct result of the fact that STAR exams test students separately on each subject.

In the past, said Johnson, Calistoga schools employed a team-taught, duel-graded program in which humanities courses combined multiple subjects. Under this system, he said, a subject like English might have been combined with U.S. history, with students reading historical novels to advance their skills in both subjects simultaneously.

But this year, Calistoga schools will offer a more traditional approach. The new system, while still interdisciplinary, offers stronger emphasis on the factual components of each subject, as opposed to a focus on understanding the “big picture, analysis and causes.”

“We’ll be focusing more on the information the state wants students to acquire,” said Johnson.

Johnson said he is disappointed in the need for this shift in curriculum, but recognizes its necessity. “It’s sad because this program was truly unique, truly interdisciplinary and was a ‘thinking curriculum,’ but when large numbers of students are still grappling with the basics of English language, having an interdisciplinary approach may be more complicated for those students to grasp.”

No Child Left Behind is also on the minds of the St. Helena Unified School District officials as they make changes to the curriculum for the new school year. While St. Helena will not adopt any canned programs specifically geared toward students below proficiency level, the school district will implement the International Baccalaureate this year. This program spans from kindergarten through 12th grade and culminates in a diploma that is considered by some to give an edge to students applying to college.

The primary reason for adopting this program, said Laura Perkins, St. Helena Unified public information officer, is to maintain consistency throughout grade levels and to aid in the transition from elementary to middle and high school levels. “Of course,” she said, “it will also serve as a nice supplement to the state and federal requirements of No Child Left Behind and to meet California and federal standards.”

Napa County Office of Education Superintendent Barbara Nemko said teaching specifically toward tests is always a concern. “Tests are developed to test standards, so if the standards are what everybody thinks kids should know and do, then it’s not a problem. The problem is that there are just too many tests.”