Even as most of Gilroy’s public schools continue to add points
to their scores on a statewide measure of student achievement, the
district added two more elementary schools
– Las Animas and Antonio Del Buono – to its list of Program
Improvement schools and is teetering on the edge of becoming a PI
district itself.
Even as most of Gilroy’s public schools continue to add points to their scores on a statewide measure of student achievement, the district added two more elementary schools – Las Animas and Antonio Del Buono – to its list of Program Improvement schools and is teetering on the edge of becoming a PI district itself.
Today’s release of a critical round of test scores shows two of the Gilroy Unified School District’s 16 schools are meeting the increasingly rigorous academic targets set by the federal government.
Having missed federal growth targets for the second year running, the district as a whole is in danger of becoming a PI district, but is still waiting for more data on its graduation rate and high school exit exam results until administrators can be sure.
“It is very possible that we will be a PI district,” said Kermit Schrock, the district’s director of student assessment and data management. “We’re right on the border.”
Districts across the county and state saw similar results, with schools that showed success on the state measure, the Academic Performance Index, failing to meet the federal government’s yardstick, known as Adequate Yearly Progress.
AYP does not take a school’s growth over time into account but mandates all students must be proficient in math and language arts by 2014. This year, the federal bar was set at 56 percent proficiency for unified school districts.
When comparing the state and federal models, Superintendent Deborah Flores said she preferred the state’s measure of success, hands down.
“I always like to compare the AYP to the high jump,” she said. “Every year the bar goes up, but no matter how talented you are, there are always reasons why an athlete can’t make it over that high bar. Even though you can see we’re making steady progress all over the district, unfortunately under AYP, we’ll still be penalized.”
Schools that do not make AYP earn the distinction of Program Improvement, which comes with federal sanctions and allows parents to transfer their students to a non-PI school. When a district falls into PI, the penalties play out on a larger scale, and families are given the option of removing their students from the district entirely.
The majority of the county’s schools districts are designated as PI districts.
Scores on the state’s scale of success, however, painted a brighter picture, with almost every school improving at least a few points.
All but two schools added points to their score on the API, which is graded on a 1,000-point scale.
Two schools – Eliot Elementary and Brownell Middle – shone particularly brightly on federal and state measures of achievement.
Though both fell short of the federal benchmark in at least one subject area, they moved enough students toward proficiency that they met the federal requirement via an alternative method, called safe harbor.
Eliot tacked an additional 56 points onto its API score, making it the district’s fifth school to surpass the statewide goal of 800. Three years ago, Eliot was the lowest scoring elementary school in the district.
Brownell also boosted its API score by 37 points. As a PI school that hadn’t made federal targets in at least five years, the progress shows the school is on the road to recovery, school officials said. If Brownell meets federal goals one more year, it will be able to shed the label of PI.
Brownell administrators shared the news with their students but said their work is not done. They will have to hit the ever-rising federal target again this year, a task educators statewide said will not be easy for many schools.
“It never ends,” said Brownell Principal Greg Camacho-Light.
After a tumultuous few years with high turnover from the top down, Brownell is back on solid footing and is working to build a culture of excellence, said Camacho-Light, who just began his third year as Brownell’s principal. By targeting disciplinary issues, introducing more after-school programs and a summer-reading program, emphasizing the importance of college and strengthening collaboration schoolwide, “we were able to do phenomenal work in the first two years,” Camacho-Light said.
“If anyone thought we weren’t in the ballgame before, we’re in the ballgame, and we’re in the same league as anyone else,” he said. “It’s undeniable that we’ve turned things around here and we’re going at a very strong clip.”
During the past several years, Brownell and South Valley Middle School, which has also missed federal growth targets for at least five years, have lost hundreds of students to Ascencion Solorsano Middle, the district’s only non-PI middle school. But while Brownell made AYP this year, Solorsano did not. Another year of the same could see the two schools swapping places.
Educators across the state have criticized the federal demands as unattainable, saying almost all schools will fall short of AYP by 2014.
“The increase in the number of schools not making Adequate Yearly Progress this year might be misinterpreted as indicating that schools are performing worse,” said Dr. Charles Weis, Santa Clara County superintendent of schools. “But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, student scores are better than ever. However, we’re at the stage now where unrealistic expectations for growth are outpacing our rate of improvement.”
Schrock pointed to schools such as Luigi Aprea and Las Animas to illustrate the disconnect. While both are well above 800 points on the API, the two schools fell short of the federal standards, and Las Animas became a PI school.
“Here we have a high-performing school that’s in PI,” Schrock said of Las Animas. “Solorsano could be another 800-school that becomes PI.”
Flores pointed to Las Animas as a “perfect example of why AYP is not a good model of measuring a school’s progress.”
“(Las Animas) has made tremendous growth every year and yet here they are in PI,” she said. “It’s ironic to see schools making really good growth on the API but not on the AYP.”
At the high school level, graduation rates are factored into AYP status and because that data is not yet available, high schools across the state are still waiting to find out if they made AYP. On the academic side, it looks as if Christopher and Gilroy high schools will have fallen short.
On the other hand, the Dr. T.J. Owens Gilroy Early College Academy made AYP and remains the district’s highest scorer on the API, with 892 points.
In its first year, Christopher scored well on the API with 783 points, 17 points shy of the goal of 800. Meanwhile, Gilroy High earned 729 points, up from previous years but significantly behind Christopher.
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What does it all mean?
– Academic Performance Index (API): On a scale of 200 to 1,000, the API summarizes a school’s performance on a battery of state standardized tests, including spring tests given to second through 11th graders and the high school exit exam. It is calculated by converting a student’s performance on the statewide assessments across multiple content areas into points on the API scale. Improvement is measured by comparing API from one year to the previous year. The statewide target score is 800 points. Five of 16 district schools have surpassed this goal.
– Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): Schools that receive Title I funds – federal dollars that help schools educate low-income children – must show that a certain percentage of their students are proficient in language arts and math, as determined by state assessments. The progress must be consistent across all subgroups, including Hispanic and low-income students and those still learning English. This year, the required percentage of students proficient or above for unified school districts is 56 percent in language arts, 56.4 percent in math. The bar raises every year and all students must be proficient by 2014. Two of 16 district schools made AYP this year. The status of two additional schools is pending.
– Program Improvement (PI): A school that does not make AYP for two consecutive years will enter PI. A school must make AYP for two consecutive years to exit PI. PI status comes with a list of sanctions, including the obligation to provide students enrolled in a PI school the option to transfer to another school within the district that is not PI, with paid transportation. Seven district schools are in PI.
– Safe Harbor: Safe harbor is an alternate method of method of avoiding PI. Though the school may not have met the federal proficiency goal, it has shown adequate progress in moving students from scoring at the below proficient level to the proficient level.
