Gilroy
– The Gilroy Early College Academy has become a temporary
panacea for the district, promising to boost academic performance,
alleviate overcrowding at Gilroy High School and bring money into
the district while diversifying students’ schooling options.
Gilroy – The Gilroy Early College Academy has become a temporary panacea for the district, promising to boost academic performance, alleviate overcrowding at Gilroy High School and bring money into the district while diversifying students’ schooling options.
The new high school – a joint effort between the Gilroy Unified School District and Gavilan College – will offer both high school and college-level classes to high-achieving kids from low socioeconomic brackets beginning this fall.
“Early college academy is, in fact, high school elevated to the power of college,” said Principal Michael Hall.
A Day in the Life
The ethos of the early college movement is based on academic rigor, said Hall.
Each day, students will have three periods of high school classes and two periods of either college classes or teacher-supported study sessions. They will also have two to four hours of homework each night and the option of taking more college classes in the afternoon and evening.
While art and music will be part of the curriculum, students will not be able to play sports with the college or high school.
As a result, the school will attract a specific type of student, said Hall.
“It’s not a one size fits all,” he said. “These kids are not only taking a high school curriculum that’s honors-AP level, they’re also full-time colleges students at the same time. It takes a really determined kid to go into one of these programs.”
With a population made up of these kids, early college academies often score much higher than their district counterparts on state exams. At San Mateo Middle College High School – which serves a similar demographic as Gilroy High School and where Hall was a principal – 99 percent of the students passed the CAHSEE – the standardized state graduation test – on the first attempt.
Students also scored highly on the STAR English-Language Arts exam – another standardized state test – with 61 percent determined to be advanced and an additional 32 percent proficient. By contrast, Gilroy High School had only 17 percent of juniors rank advanced and 17 percent rank proficient in 2006.
This high achievement in high school is rewarded in college, Hall said.
Students graduating from the academy have enough college credits to skip two grades at institutions in the University of California and California State University systems.
“That’s like handing somebody a check for 50 grand,” Hall said.
It also means that Gilroy students will be some of the most educated for their age. They will typically be 18 when they enter into their junior year of college and 20 when they graduate college.
“They’ll be in grad school when their contemporaries are juniors in college,” said Hall.
Take My Students, Please
When the early college academy starts up, it will open its doors to about 70 ninth-graders. Each year after that, it will take in a similar number of ninth-graders plus a few older kids, thus becoming a full four-year institution with about 400 students by fall 2010.
These students will likely fit a number of parameters, Hall said. A typical student will average a grade of B in classes, have no major disciplinary infractions, come from an ethnic minority and have parents who did not go to college. In addition, students will have to be able to read at or near to a ninth-grade level. However, these students might be at risk of dropping out of school because of lack of money or cultural issues, such as needing to take care of family members.
For GHS, students going to the academy could bring mixed results. A reduction of 400 students could bring breathing room to a school that is currently about 700 students above capacity. However, GHS is also suffering from sub-par standardized test performances, especially from its Hispanic contingent.
As more high-achieving Hispanic students are funneled off into the new high school, GHS could be left with a larger proportion of underachievers. This, in turn, could keep the high school in program improvement – a federal designation that allows parents to transfer their kids to other schools in the district with the district covering the transportation costs. While this would not have any fiscal impact now, it could create problems when Christopher High School is built in 2009.
This threat is too small and not probable enough to warrant worry, said Trustee Francisco Dominguez.
“We’re talking about 70 students in the first year,” he said. The real issue is “about what GHS has to do about serving the students that are there. They have a responsibility to raise test scores. That’s the bottom line.”
James Maxwell, principal at GHS, is behind the early college program. He does not see the academy as competition and vouches for the program’s success, having had a niece who graduated from the early college school in San Mateo.
Adding the academy is about increasing student options and success, he said.
Kids enrolling in the academy will be “students who may otherwise be at risk of not completing their four-year degrees in college and for those who may not be happy in a mainstream high school,” he said. “If you want sports and drama, you belong at GHS. If you want the fast track to college, you belong in this program.”
Spreading the Wealth
Thanks to a one-time $400,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and yearly funding from the state due to increased attendance, the early college academy could end up bringing money into the district.
The grant – earmarked for costs such as textbooks and paying staff – will bear the brunt of the initial costs. Other money for needs such as transportation will come from the district, which receives funds for every student that goes to a school in the district.
As the academy becomes established, it is likely to attract students from outside the district, Hall said. These students would then add to the total number of students being educated in the district, raising state funding.
In addition, operation costs for the early college academy will be less than a conventional 400-student high school because the academy will share Gavilan College’s facilities and professors. In turn, the college will get money from the state based on the number of college classes students take.
Looking into the future, Hall sees gains for Gavilan as well. If successful, the early college program could be extended to the college’s satellite campuses in Morgan Hill, Hollister and elsewhere.
“The beautiful thing about the early college model is if it is done right, it is repeatable,” he said. “You plant this seed, you water it, it grows, you pinch it off and put it somewhere else.”
“It’ll work,” he added with a laugh, “as long as Gates has money.”