Sound the GUSD academic failure alarm louder!

There was a time in the not so distant past when the Gilroy
Dispatch was accused of being
”
too hard
”
on Gilroy Unified School District.
There was a time in the not so distant past when the Gilroy Dispatch was accused of being “too hard” on Gilroy Unified School District.

Many people who work in the district complained about the bad press, thoroughly convinced that reporting on the missteps of the district was bad journalism.

These very same people must be thinking that The Dispatch has now gotten religion, because the reporters have been giving GUSD the kid glove treatment recently.

It has been left to columnists and letter writers to send up the flares, because The Dispatch reporting has been pretty rosy. Without columnists like Doug Meier, Tom Mulhern, Cynthia Walker and yours truly, people in Gilroy might have started believing that GUSD had turned over a new leaf. And GUSD may well be about to turn over a new leaf, but certainly not before a task force can be put into place to do an extensive study of leaves, and decide which type of leaf that should be.

Scores can plummet, kids can lack the fundamentals and teachers can be missing the most basic instructional materials, but by gosh, we will have the definitive leaf in place ready to be turned over when the task force has completed its mission. Such is the state of affairs in GUSD.

Those of you who read The Dispatch article last week which was headlined “Sound the Test Alarm” may have missed one of the most disturbing pieces of information I have ever read. I believe that The Dispatch buried the lead by failing to print the following tidbit in boldface so that we could all be alarmed:

“In math, it was more critical. Decreases were more widespread, with the number of eighth-graders scoring at the proficient level dropping 12 percentage points, and ninth-graders dropping 21 percentage points. Gifted students in grades eight to 11 saw the biggest math drops overall: 27 percentage points in eighth grade; 31 percentage points in ninth grade.”

When I read that paragraph I was more than alarmed, I had a sense of déjà vu. Wasn’t this the subject of a district GATE meeting many moons ago?

Parents of gifted students have been complaining for years about the lack of attention paid to high achievers. Parents of high-achieving students came to know that this school district had more important students to worry about. Parents of high achievers are marginalized in so many ways; I have grown accustomed to the feeling that having children who succeed is somehow a character flaw. Most parents are problematic for this district, because the parents who tend to get involved when the district asks for parental involvement and input actually have something to say, and very often it does not follow the district script.

And now comes the thorny problem of high-achieving kids who are losing ground. At the rate they are dropping, these students will no longer be high achievers. This will benefit GUSD enormously. Once the kids at the top plummet, we will have reached the holy grail of education circa 2004 and narrowed the achievement gap. Ironically, once those high-achieving kids become mediocre, they might finally get some attention from the district. 

A 31 percent drop among gifted ninth graders in math should be good for a little gratuitous hand wringing among the powers-that-be. Three years ago, my daughter was admitted into the John Hopkins program based partially on the fact that she scored in the top 2 percent in the nation in math on her SAT-9. Ican attest to the fact that she has not had a head injury or been on drugs, yet there is every indication that her needs are not being met. 

I can hardly wait to see how far my child has fallen this past year, because I know that I can count on GUSD to come up with a really good reason for this phenomenon. I know that an answer will be forthcoming, because we will finally have accountability here in Gilroy. 

Coming on the heels of the Strategic Plan is the Accountability Task Force.

I can hardly wait for Doug Reeves and/or the GUSD accountability task force to be put in place so we can get answers right away to solve this particular dilemma.

Someone who is not among those one-third of gifted ninth graders must be held accountable for the fact that children with a high aptitude for math are unable to master subject matter which is essential for success on the SATs.  Accountability, a new concept to public education in Gilroy, is status quo in the rest of society. Accountability is practiced daily in the lives of regular people. If you don’t do your job, you get fired. If you don’t stop overeating, you get fat. If you don’t fight for a better world, you get to live in one that gets a little bit scarier every day.

Here is what accountability looks like in most families: “Honey, if you don’t have time to do your homework, than you don’t have time to go to the movies …” 

The accountability experts in GUSD have one year to remedy this problem, as junior year is right around the corner for last years record-plummeting ninth grade math students.

Get to work.