Five schools make the grade on progress report; others fall by a
small margin
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Gilroy Unified School District is one of only six districts in Santa Clara County to earn a passing grade on the federal government’s report card used to gauge how many students are testing at an appropriate level.
While the district as a whole received a positive rating among the 32 districts in the county, fewer than half of its individual schools made the cut on the Adequate Yearly Progress report, released Friday.
Five of the 12 schools within Gilroy Unified met the AYP standard, established by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The act was revised this year to require schools and districts to show progress toward having all public school students reach the “proficient” level on standardized tests by the 2013-14 school year.
Superintendent Edwin Diaz is not discouraged by the results because the seven schools failing to show progress missed the proficiency mark by only a small margin.
“We met our target,” Diaz said. “The potential to even do better is great because we just need to clean up those few areas.”
Of the seven schools which did not meet the progress requirement, most failed because one out of several categories of students – including Latino, English learners and low-income students – had too many ranked below the proficient level.
Two factors determine AYP at this stage: 95 percent of students must have participated in the standardized testing. This is true for all sub-groups reported, so a school with a significant number of low-income students must have 95 percent of that group taking the test. Of those students, a certain percentage must reach the “proficient” or “advanced” levels on the five-tier scale for both the English-language arts and math sections of the test.
South Valley Middle School failed in the largest number of categories. Its Latino, low-income and English learner subgroups did not pass the math section of the test. To pass in all three categories, one more Latino student, five more low-income students and three more English learners would have to pass.
The number of students required to pass the tests was well above the minimum in most of the categories.
“I’m pretty confident that next year everybody will make it,” said Esther Corral-Carlson, director of student assessment and program evaluation for GUSD.
Gilroy High School was the only school to fail because it did not meet the participation rate for one group of students.
Too few students in the Hispanic/Latino and English learner groups finished both the English and math sections of the California High School Exit Exam, on which the high schools’ progress is based.
Seven more Latino students would have needed to complete the English portion and two more should have finished the math portion. The English learner group was similar.
“If we had had more English language learners complete the test, it might have made a difference … because there could be some overlap,” said Principal Bob Bravo. “Definitely it shows how important it is for us to improve attendance for the high school exit exam.”
More students might not complete the exit exam because retakes of the test are limited, Bravo said. Whereas the California Standards Test used in elementary and middle schools can be retaken over a certain period of time, the exit exam offers students one chance to retake a section if they were absent.
Tenth-graders taking the exit exam next year will be reminded of how important the test is for their future, Bravo said. Next year’s 10th-graders will be the first class required to pass the exam in order to graduate.
Despite poor participation, all groups at GHS passed the proficiency level for the exit exam.
“I’m happy to see … the actual academic performance,” Bravo said. “The students passed in all areas.”
Schoolwide, more than half of the high school students passed for English and 40 percent for math. The scoring of the exit exam is rescaled specifically for AYP. A passing score of proficient or above for AYP purposes is more rigorous than the pass/fail standard for exit exam purposes.
Las Animas Elementary School failed to prove progress by 1 percent in one of the 16 applicable categories. On the math section of the California Standards Test, 12.6 percent of English language learners passed, while the minimum requirement was 13.6 percent.
The school needed eight more students to pass the math section to prove progress on state standards.
“I think the adjustments we’re going to have to make are not huge for these schools,” Corral-Carlson said. “Based on the different action steps the district is taking (to meet state standards), we are seeing results.”
Six districts within Santa Clara County made their growth requirement for 2002-03. GUSD was one of two unified school districts, which include high schools, within that group. Seven of Morgan Hill Unified’s 15 schools passed the requirements, but it failed as a district. Hollister School District in San Benito County did not make AYP, and only one of its eight schools passed.
Phase 2 of AYP comes out in October to factor in the Academic Performance Index scores released that month. Graduation rates for high schools will also factor into AYP at that time.
