In April, the state discovered an error in calculations
regarding similar schools and removed the rankings from its Web
site
Gilroy – Predictions that revised similar school rankings would have virtually no impact on local schools were dead wrong.
“We were lead to believe that the amount of missing data was so small it wouldn’t have a significant impact on our overall rankings,” said Superintendent Edwin Diaz. “So obviously we’re disappointed. Most of our schools are still above average but it definitely had an impact, especially on Gilroy high and Brownell.”
Only three of Gilroy’s 12 schools remained unaffected after the state released recalculations of the 2005 Academic Performance Index similar schools category Tuesday. Ascencion Solorsano Middle School retained its rank of 10 and Las Animas Elementary School remained at eight, while Rod Kelley jumped one point from four to five.
Gilroy High School and Brownell Middle School went from an already low rank of five to three, while Rucker Elementary School dropped from a seven to a four.
In April, after releasing the API rankings in late March, the California Department of Education discovered an error in the calculation of similar school rankings. A member of the public tipped off the state, pointing out that one of the schools did not share equivalent characteristics with the other institutions listed in that category.
CDE officials soon discovered that they failed to add in the category “other” when factoring the ethnicity element. And because the category plays a significant part in many schools – one has 38 percent classified as “other” – the mistake caused some havoc in some districts.
In the Gilroy Unified School District, at least 4 percent of students marked the unknown ethnicity box, considerably higher than the statewide average of 1 percent, said Bob Bernstein, CDE administrator of academic accountability.
“They have a much higher than average percent of missing ethnicity,” he said. “If you were missing more than average, then when we corrected it your rank usually went down.”
That’s not what Diaz expected. After learning about the mistake, he heard that in Gilroy the percentage of students marking multi-racial or “other” was far too insignificant to have any sway.
Although statewide rankings are just as essential and the majority of schools received fours or fives in that category, school officials were overjoyed with the similar school results from the March data. Diaz and Assistant Superintendent Jacki Horejs gleefully released the information, pointing out that Gilroy’s success in the comparable school category proves that schools are doing well when placed next to similar institutions.
“Of course I’m not as ecstatic as I was before,” Diaz said.
The API is based on student assessments, including the Standardized Testing and Reporting exams and the California High School Exit Exam taken by sophomores. To produce the list of 100 comparable schools, the state calculated a number of factors including ethnicity, demographics, average class size, socioeconomic status, the number of credentialed teachers and the number of GATE, English learners and learning disabled students.
The original data placed two schools in the nine category and four as high as eight. Under the revised information, only two schools received rankings of eight and many dropped to six.
Still, Diaz doesn’t view the news as completely negative. Even with the changes, all of the schools similar school ranks, excluding Luigi Aprea Elementary, Brownell Middle and Gilroy High schools, improved since the last reporting period in 2004.
Also, the flawed data may serve as an important lesson to the district, reminding everyone to not consider one assessment the ultimate evidence of academic progress, he said.
“It’s a very important indicator and it’s an indicator that we rely on heavily because it compares how well we are doing in comparison to schools with similar populations, but in order to be fair the measurement has to be accurate,” Diaz said.
