Electives required

The results from a DNA test -- a pattern of yellow dash marks moving across a high-tech Petri dish -- were scrutinized by a group of Framingham High School students during a recent class.

Their assignment: To find out whether corn chips from a grocery store contained genetically modified ingredients.

"I think this is our future," said Kristin Igoe , a 17-year-old senior in the class who is contemplating a career in biochemistry. "You can have a good job, and I want to help other people."

This Framingham biotechnology class is one of the innovative electives that are growing more typical in high schools in the region.

Despite tight budgets, high schools are under pressure to offer high-quality educations and get students into good colleges, and electives can be a place for juniors and seniors to spread their wings -- and hone their resumes.

Other popular electives include creative writing, art history, robotics, music theory, architecture, American pop culture, child development, forensic science, astronomy, and environmental science.

Math no longer tops out at calculus; schools also offer statistics and discrete mathematics. And the list of computer courses -- including programming, Web design, and GIS , or geographic information system -- is enough to make anyone who graduated only a decade ago feel old.

"I think this is a growing trend that we are seeing as high schools, in particular, have had to become more accountable and the whole issue of more rigorous programs has come into being," said Richard Flanary, director of professional development services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals, based in Reston, Va.

The name of the game nationwide is college prep, and it's no longer acceptable to let seniors coast in their final year, he said, because then they are at a disadvantage when they start college.

The number of electives at Hudson High School has grown steadily over the last decade, according to p rincipal John Stapelfeld.

Two of the newest offerings are an honors philosophy class that started three years ago and an advanced Portuguese literature class first offered last year. Next year, students will be able to take a class studying world history through film.

It can be difficult to maintain the variety when money runs short, said Stapelfeld, but the popularity of the courses helps.

"The biggest challenge is to be able to keep the course in the course catalog during tight budget times," he said. "We've had success with the courses, so, of course, parents are interested in keeping them going -- and they go to Town Meeting."

Classes like environmental chemistry and music history help produce well-rounded students, he said, and also keep morale high among teachers, who appreciate the opportunity to think outside the core curriculum.

Esoteric electives can be antidotes to the rigid standards imposed by the state and federal governments, said Andy Hargreaves, an education professor at Boston College.

There needs to be some standardization of what is taught, he said, but the current requirements have produced a kind of "karaoke curriculum " in which students and teachers are forced to sing someone else's tune almost all the time.

"These electives, . . . they're like a canary in the coal mine: They are one of the signs that there are problems with the existing over-tested core and basic curriculum," Hargreaves said. "Teachers and school districts are finding, from the bottom up, that the standards movement has gone too far. Kids need other things to engage them."

A heavy emphasis on teaching a set curriculum to meet standardized tests also makes it hard to attract and retain the best teachers, he said, because strong teachers want autonomy and discretion.

In Newton, teachers have been given more flexibility. Newton North High School offers some of the more offbeat courses available locally, on subjects such as the Harlem Renaissance, modern poetry, ethics in the modern world, meteorology, and oceanography.

Rita Sheinker teaches a course titled "Advanced Clothing and Fashion Design" at the school. Because of budget cuts, she said, her introductory course was eliminated this year, even though more than 100 students signed up, and there's a new battle brewing for the next school year over the advanced course.

"We're on the chopping block again this year," she said. "The kids are trying to schedule an appointment with the principal to fight again."

Although Sheinker said she has seen a few students follow up her class with a career in clothing design or merchandising, that's not necessarily the only benefit.

Rebecca Weizel, a 17-year-old junior in the advanced class, said the real value of the course is more complex.

"Everybody in the room is so different from everybody else," she said. "I have a lip ring and I had hot-pink hair last year. Another girl in the class has long, blond hair and plays lacrosse. In the room, we just come together over a sewing machine and pieces of fabric. I think a class like this really brings kids together that wouldn't have otherwise met."

Even though she doesn't plan to pursue clothing design as a career, Weizel said, the class provides an important creative release for her that she hopes to take with her wherever she goes.

Variety is good as a way to explore career options, but not at the expense of the fundamentals, cautioned Heidi Glidden, an assistant director in the Educational Issues Department for the American Federation of Teachers, a Washington-based union that represents more than a million teachers and healthcare workers nationwide.

"The one thing to be careful with is to make sure you're not offering all these things and putting at risk a solid core curriculum," Glidden said. "We want to make sure there's still rigor involved there, but it's important to have choices."

It's a difficult balancing act, Framingham High School p rincipal Michael Welch said, to provide students with all the fundamentals they need in addition to the elective courses that could spark "passion and a career."

Electives are constantly under threat because of tight budgets, he said. But as long as they garner enough interest, which in Framingham means at least 26 students, they are worth fighting for, he said.

"Those are really what give a school character and uniqueness," Welch said. "Those types of electives are where kids form very powerful connections with their teachers. Every school has English, math, history, science, and world languages. Not every school has biotech and TV," he said, referring to the school's popular TV production courses.

Sometimes unusual classes survive and thrive because of the interests of the particular teacher. This seems to be the case with Framingham's biotech course, taught by Gerry Moss, who worked in the private sector for nearly 30 years, including a job as a research biochemist, before going into teaching.

After the lab, in which students learned that the corn chips did not contain genetically modified ingredients, Moss reminded his students that they would have a test the following day.

The next lab was to have them analyze their own DNA. They had already learned how to extract their genes in a previous lab, which produced a cloudy clump in a small vial that they fashioned into necklaces.

"The joke was," Moss said, "I told them to go home and wave it in front of your parents and say, 'Look what you gave me. Thanks a lot.' "

Lisa Kocian can be reached at 508-820-4231 or lkocian@globe.com.