Tag Archives: students

by Marilyn Berlin Snell

At 16—too young to be so mean—Ashley frequently let her claws fly in class. Scowls appeared at random, over slights no one could recall delivering. Her general disposition often kept the desks around hers vacant while the rest filled with students.

It was January of her junior year at Balboa High School in San Francisco, and the principal had just taken Ashley out of the communication-arts program that would have united her and two disruptive friends in the same classroom until graduation. Only 13 percent of Balboa’s junior class that year scored at or above the national average on the standardized reading and math tests—results that the San Francisco Unified School District called “nothing less than a crisis.” Continue reading →