Gilroy
– Despite extra efforts this year to catapult – or at least
nudge – math proficiency at Gilroy High School, the results so far
are a mixed bag.
Gilroy – Despite extra efforts this year to catapult – or at least nudge – math proficiency at Gilroy High School, the results so far are a mixed bag.
Last year, 68 percent of GHS students who took the California High School Exit Exam passed the math portion of the test, compared to 82 percent and 75 percent of students in Santa Clara County and the state, respectively. Other previous GHS test scores, such as from the California Standards Test, show a similar lack of student performance in math.
The response from the high school’s administrators and teachers was to develop and implement a math improvement plan at the beginning of this school year. The efforts include increased teacher collaboration, hiring an external overseer, and administering diagnostic pre-assessments, mastery tests and common end-of-course assessments, said GHS Principal Bob Bravo.
But in comparing math scores from the Measure of Academic Progress test students took in the spring of 2004 and again this winter, the news isn’t very encouraging.
The average student in ninth-grade Algebra AA performed at the fifth-grade level both in the spring and the winter. The average student in Algebra A, the next step up, performed at the sixth-grade level in both test periods.
The hope now is that the improvement plan will change that over the long term, Bravo said.
“I think what we’re doing is biting the bullet,” he said. “I think there are some deeper issues we have to look at across the board and in the school.”
In the spring, the high school students will take the MAP test again and be able to compare results from the winter. The difference this time around is that for the first time, the test will be course-specific. So instead of taking a general math assessment, students will take tests in algebra, geometry, statistics, pre-calculus and calculus.
One encouraging result of the improvement plan is student performance on the mastery tests, Bravo said. The mastery tests are short, skills-based exams that require students to answer at least 90 percent of the questions correctly to pass. Students must pass all of the mastery tests to pass the class, but they’re allowed to retake the test several times. The tests also help administrators and teachers identify specific areas in which students are struggling, Bravo said.
The most significant gains have been in the retests. For example, just under 40 percent of Algebra A students passed on their first try the mastery test that asked students to divide with decimals, and about 70 percent passed after retests. By late January, 60 percent of the high school’s Algebra A students had passed all mastery tests, Bravo said.
The high school also has been tracking how often students in different math classes turn in their homework. The general trend is the more advanced the math class, the higher the rate of turn in.
“That’s sort of the question of the chicken or the egg,” he said. “Are students more likely to turn in their homework because they understand it? Or are they more likely to understand it because they turn it in?”
The high school also created the new position of math coach, filled by veteran math teacher Cathy Silva, who visits math classrooms on a weekly basis and assists teachers with lesson plans, feedback and moral support.
She also has been researching high-performing high schools with similar populations and schedules as GHS to see what techniques those schools are using to boost math performance. This month she’ll visit San Benito High School, which operates on an alternating block schedule similar to GHS and is twice as proficient in algebra. Scheduling makes a difference in how students perform because some students learn better by taking shorter classes every day, while other students benefit from taking longer classes every other day. Block classes last a little less than two hours.
Another step is the hiring of a math coordinator from the Santa Clara County Office of Education, who will visit the high school for five days this year to observe teaching techniques and give pointers. Bravo also said the high school’s math teachers will work more closely with the district’s eighth grade teachers to achieve greater continuity between what students are learning in eighth grade and what they learn when they enter high school. So far, Bravo said that transition has been “very choppy.”
GHS math department chair Bob Santos said he has confidence in the new improvement plan, especially the fact that teachers are communicating with each other more than ever.
“When I first got (to GHS), I didn’t talk to other teachers. If no one talked to me, I figured things were going well,” said Santos, who has been part of the GHS math department for 10 years.
Superintendent Edwin Diaz said this is the first time he has seen such a comprehensive approach to addressing the high school’s low math proficiency.
“It’s a very deep-rooted problem,” he said. “It’s not just a high school problem, and it’s not going to be solved in a semester.”
