In her ninth year as the coordinator of the Gilroy High School
Advanced Placement program, Kanani Pratt smiled when she received
the latest scores.
In her ninth year as the coordinator of the Gilroy High School Advanced Placement program, Kanani Pratt smiled when she received the latest scores.
“They’re the best since I’ve started,” she said.
AP tests are scored on a scale of one to five and high school students can typically earn college credit if they pass the tests with a score of three or higher. Compared to the previous year, scores on six tests were up – all but one by more than 10 percentage points – and five were down. A new class, music theory, saw a 71 percent pass rate and only two of the school’s 12 AP classes, biology and environmental science, saw pass rates below 50 percent. A particularly bright spot on the list of scores were Gilroy High’s performance on calculus and statistics tests, two that historically have seen low pass rates.
Since 2005, no more than 30 percent of the statistics test takers have seen success. Last school year, seven of the 10 students taking statistics passed. Calculus students at GHS have seen similar results in past years, with only one or two students passing in 2005 and 2006. This past school year, 11 of the 22 students taking the exam passed.
“The math department did a really good job targeting students that belonged in those classes,” Pratt said. In past years, some of the students enrolling in AP classes didn’t have as solid a background as they should have had to succeed, she said. Last school year, veteran math teacher Kathy Silva was able to attend a week of training and took the reins of the statistics class, a change Pratt believes contributed to the jump in test scores.
Also, the Class of 2010 was the first group of seniors who had a full menu of honors and AP classes available to them as freshman, Pratt said.
“I think that had a lot to do with it,” she said.
As for the classes that saw lower than average scores – biology with a pass rate of 30 percent and environmental science with a pass rate of 38 percent – “those were brand new teachers to the AP program,” Pratt said. “I know for a fact that they’re already making plans for what they’re going to do differently this year.”
It’s difficult to predict how test scores will vary over time, Pratt said. Some years, her students emerge from the test saying it was easier than they expected. Other years, they come out looking defeated.
“AP’s weird, she said. “Every year the test is different. You just don’t know.”
Either way, she’s always aiming to beat the national average, which hovers around a 50 percent passage rate. This year’s official average has not been released yet.
“If we can beat that average, we’re doing better than most high schools in America,” she said.
