Only .62 percent of Gilroy High students who attend Gavilan
College are ready for college level mathematics
It is small comfort – the knowledge that Gilroy High School is better off than San Benito High School. A negligible .62 percent of GHS graduates who attend Gavilan Community College are ready for college-level math. No SBHS grads who attend Gavilan are ready for college-level math. That’s zero percent.
Even with the knowledge that the GHS graduates who attend Gavilan are not representative of the high school as a whole – some are off to University of California schools and such – it’s still a deeply disturbing number that should serve as a wake-up call that the district and this community cannot ignore: GUSD’s math program is floundering, and it’s our children’s futures and our country’s future that are at risk.
We compete in a global marketplace for jobs, with students from far-flung places like India and China who are in many cases much better prepared for the mathematics requirements they will face in college and the workplace.
Expanding the math instruction time at Gilroy Unified School District middle schools was an important first step. But it’s not simply enough.
Everything must be on the table: incentives, merit pay, public reporting of student test results by instructor, curriculum, schedules and more.
We live, happily, in a capitalistic society. If that means we have to pay higher salaries to attract excellent math teachers because they’re in short supply than we have to pay instructors of other subjects, then we must do it.
If that means that we have to institute merit pay based on student achievement to encourage teachers to adjust their teaching practices, then we must do it.
If that means that we must adopt a different math curriculum to improve student performance, then we must do it.
If that means we must substantially adjust the high school’s block schedule to minimize or eliminate its negative impact on student performance, then we must do it.
And we must do it now, with a parent’s sense of urgency, not with a bureaucrat’s sense of dithering and delay.
Because what we cannot do is continue to tolerate one out every 161 GHS grads showing up at Gavilan ready to tackle college-level math courses.
