GILROY
– The school district is sticking to its guns and continues to
strive toward the lofty student achievement goals it set three
years ago, at least for the time being.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – The school district is sticking to its guns and continues to strive toward the lofty student achievement goals it set three years ago, at least for the time being.
The target set by Gilroy Unified School District was to see 90 percent of students performing at grade level in reading and math by June 2004. The district also wanted to reduce the achievement gap between groups, such as native English speakers and English learners, to less than 5 percent.
While CAT-6 test results released last month showed that Gilroy students for the most part improved scores, they still fell far short of the year-end target. Currently, about 40 percent of GUSD students are at grade level in reading and English-language arts and 45 percent reach grade level in math. District officials are not discouraged.
“It’s still our goal and for this year, we’re going to push as hard as we can to ensure we get as close as we can to those goals,” Superintendent Edwin Diaz said. “In my mind, when you have goals, they have to be ambitious and bold enough that they reflect what your vision is.”
GUSD’s vision has become even more grand than it claims to be. While the stated goal is to measure students at “grade level,” the district is in fact trying to get students to meet the “proficient” or “advanced” ranking on a second standardized test. The California Standards Test gauges student performance based on statewide academic standards and ranks students on five levels, from “far below basic” to “advanced.”
On a 100-point scale, students who reach the proficient level are considered to be about 66 while “grade level” would be 50.
“We’re looking at getting the highest number of kids we can at proficient or advanced,” Diaz said. “It means that kids are on grade level or are on track for college-level work.”
Currently, 33 percent of students in GUSD meet that mark on the English-language arts portion of the CST while 32 percent match that on the math portion. That is a growth of three percentage points in English and eight percentage points in math over scores in 2002.
The school board may revise the district’s June 2004 student achievement target when it develops a revised three-year plan next March. But in the meantime, the 90 percent stays.
“It’s something to always have in front of the public, and the teachers and the kids to say, ‘Hey, we’re not taking this lightly,’ ” said Jim Rogers, school board president. “Why not set it there, because nobody wants to set it too low.”
District officials said improved test scores show efforts to meet their lofty objective are paying off.
“We are starting to get some evidence that we can make some very dramatic growth, so we don’t want to back off on the urgency,” Diaz said.
Student achievement on standardized tests is crucial, because all students in the country must achieve the rank of proficient or above by the 2013-14 school year.
Reducing the difference in scores between separate groups of students to less than 5 percent is part of the district’s larger goal to provide a quality education to all students, whether low-income, disabled or English learners.
“If your vision is to have an equitable system, you have to shoot for goals that are that rigorous,” Diaz said. “When you talk about … closing the achievement gap, the data shows that we’re making some significant improvements in English language learners.”
Based on a standardized English test for English language learners, 36 percent in GUSD were proficient in English last year while 14 percent were proficient in 2001. English learners also improved scores on the English portion of the standardized test at a greater rate than the district over the past three years. Between 2001 and 2003, 16 percent fewer English learners were ranked in the two lowest tiers – below basic and far below basic. For all students in GUSD, 7 percent moved from the bottom two groups in the past three years.
“One of the primary reasons that that is happening is that we’ve made (English language learners) a top priority,” said Martha Martinez, GUSD’s administrator of the ELL program. “We developed a plan on how we would support their learning.”
Martinez hopes to see those numbers improve even more in a few years as a result of the district’s year-old English immersion program. Starting last year, non-English speaking students were put in classrooms with native English speakers. Several first-grade teachers have told Martinez they are already seeing a marked increase in the level of English used by non-native speakers.
“I think (the 5 percent gap) can be achieved, but I don’t know about the timeline because we’re still working on programs that can help these kids learn English,” said Diane Elia, principal of Eliot Elementary School.
Since becoming a neighborhood school two years ago, Eliot has seen its ELL subgroup grow from less than 30 percent of the school’s population to more than 50 percent.
Much of the improvement for English learners, and the district as a whole, is credited to staff development. Programs to help teachers focus on state standards and use proven teaching theories in the classroom increased over the past two years.
Reaching the 90 percent target may just be a matter of time, board members said, because the benefits of the new programs, standards and staff development have yet to be seen.
“People respond better to a challenge than not,” board member Tom Bundros said. “It’s been shown even in the high school exit exam. The challenge of passing the exam actually motivated students to work harder, where before they may not have been so inclined.
“If we don’t meet (the June 2004 goal), then that’s going to kick off an exercise of examining why … and coming up with something that we’ll use to meet it eventually.”
When the board revises its three-year plan in March, smaller, more attainable goals might be set on the path to the district’s broader vision.
“We definitely are pushing as hard as we think we can push to make improvements,” board member David McRae said. “That’s the ultimate destination, but I think along the way there may be intermediate steps so we can decide realistically how it needs to be done.”
