LEWISTON – Three to seven minutes isn’t enough time to determine the quality of a class and whether it’s challenging students, Lewiston High School seniors Matt Gutshall and Ann Danforth said Wednesday.

“If you’re in a lecture for 20 or 30 minutes, and the person (judging the class) shows up at the beginning of the class, how can you see what the whole class is going to do?” asked Gutshall, senior class president.

“Coming for a day you can’t make a complete judgment of a school and what it’s like,” Danforth agreed.

Both were reacting to the Mitchell Institute’s Great Maine Schools Project report of Lewiston High School. Teachers interviewed were more accepting of the report and agreed the school had work to do.

The report gave Lewiston high marks for things like its math and aspirations programs, how teachers coach other teachers and the school culture.

But it said Lewiston has serious problems and needed to improve the rigor of courses, not enough students were engaged during classes, and the school is too heavily tracked – grouping students together by ability.

When the Great Maine Schools Project visiting team came to Lewiston it was in late May, just before a four-day weekend, and just before the prom, Gutshall said. It was a stressful time. Teachers were helping seniors fulfill graduation requirements. “I don’t think they got the full picture at all,” he said.

Danforth disagreed that Lewiston has too much tracking.

If all students took the same level classes, “you can’t push everyone to their highest potential” because each student has a different potential, she said.

Faculty interviewed were less critical of the report, except for one area.

The report’s conclusion that teachers were “resistant to change or apathetic was galling,” said aspirations director Joan Macri. That finding was based on the visiting team’s meeting with teachers in which few teachers attended.

“There’s a very good explanation why,” Macri said. “Teachers were misinformed.” Teachers were told it was not mandatory and would only last 15 minutes. Many teachers work with students until 2:30, and thought the meeting would be over by then.

But when it came to not enough rigor, too much tracking, and more student engagement, teachers said their school can and should do better.

“They did visit 198 classroom settings. When you have that many observations, you’ve got to assume at least part of it is certainly true,” said veteran math teacher David Bowie. The lack of student engagement has “some merit and deserves our attention.”.

But judging student engagement can be tricky. If you go into a classroom and see 20 students standing around a science project, “the perception is every kid is engaged. But are they? If a classroom instructor is writing notes on the board, there are 20 kids in their seats. The assumption is if all kids aren’t looking at the board, they’re not paying attention.” That may or may not be true, he said.

Bowie said he’s concerned with the report’s finding of not enough rigor. “They said they found higher level of rigor in other schools. … There must be something there they observed. Let’s figure out what it is.”

One obstacle the school faces is a good number of students who arrive at ninth grade with reading skills below grade level, said French teacher Anne Burg. Some only have third- grade reading level, Macri said.

“That creates a lot of problems,” Burg said. “It’s a big enough minority to have an impact on classes.” The school is addressing that with a literacy program.

Burg and others said they were glad the school was commended for positive things, such as a healthy student climate and the Early College program.

The report faulted teachers for a collective lack of vision. Burg attributed that to a dizzying array of changes going on at the same time: new curriculum, new assessments, new programs, a new principal and new direction. “They hit us at a transition point.”

Lewiston High has embraced the expectation that 100 percent of its graduates will graduate ready for college. That’s a big expectation for a community that in the 1960s only sent 25 percent of high schoolers to college, Burg said.

Getting every graduate college ready “is an ideal we need to work toward,” she said.