While the test scores at El Portal Leadership Academy are
ever-so-slowly heading in the right direction
– and given how abysmally low they were, up is really the only
direction they could go – they are certainly nothing to crow
about.
While the test scores at El Portal Leadership Academy are ever-so-slowly heading in the right direction – and given how abysmally low they were, up is really the only direction they could go – they are certainly nothing to crow about. We cringed to hear praise heaped on the school by GUSD administrators and trustees for results like these:
• 8 percent of El Portal’s students – all of whom are 10th-graders – are performing at grade level for math, according to standardized test results.
• 10 percent of El Portal’s students are performing at the ninth-grade level for math; that leaves an astounding 82 percent of El Portal’s students performing below the ninth-grade level.
The main student achievement goal of the Gilroy Unified School District, which granted El Portal’s charter, is that 90 percent of all students will be performing at or above grade level by June 2004. That goal ought to include El Portal’s students – and these numbers show the school has a long way to go.
We understand that the charter school is designed to help at-risk students, but these results don’t deliver much hope that El Portal’s students will be able to pass the state’s high school exit exam, a requirement of all students graduating in 2004 and after. Without a passing grade on this test, students will not receive their diplomas.
The charter high school began in the 2001-2002 school year with a freshman class only, and had plans to add classes each year until it housed a full four-year student body. The troubled school had a tumultuous first year, including a controversial sex education class with tips for same-sex partners and a high rate of staff turnover causing many classes to fall months behind in lesson plans.
The school board, despite strong urging from many in the community to revoke the school’s charter, instead revised its charter – in effect lowering the school’s goals – and banned it from adding a freshman class this school year.
Before anyone at the district or the charter school strains a muscle from patting themselves on the back congratulating themselves on El Portal’s supposed “turnaround,” we’d urge them to take another, clear-eyed look at these test results.
GUSD trustees need to ask themselves if this school should be allowed to add students when it is not educating the students it has, and yes, even if the experiment should be deemed a failure and ended before more harm is done.
We don’t doubt the good intentions of the faculty and administrators at El Portal or of GUSD trustees. But El Portal’s students don’t need good intentions. They need results.
