Community Corner
Report: Hispanic, African-American Students Lag in Math, College Prep
Despite lower test scores for some students, officials see improvement in some Silicon Valley schools.
By Bay City News
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and school officials in San Jose on Wednesday
called for reforms to the public school systems in Silicon Valley where
Hispanic and African-American kids remain far behind in math and college
preparation.
Reed joined three superintendents of school districts in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and others at a news conference to discuss a study of student proficiency by the Mountain View-based foundation Innovate Public Schools.
The study, called "Broken Promises: The Children Left Behind in Silicon Valley Schools," found that only 23 percent of Hispanic and 24 percent of African-American seventh and eighth graders in the two counties tested proficient in state STAR testing for algebra as of 2012.
That is compared to 57 percent of white students and 76 percent of
Asian students, the foundation's executive director Matt Hammer said during
the conference at the Santa Clara County Office of Education in San Jose.
"These are very alarming numbers," Hammer said.
Just 20 percent of Hispanic and 22 percent of African-American kids in the counties who graduated high school in four years were eligible for admission to either the University of California or California State University System, Hammer said.
The students were not eligible because they did not meet state standards such as "A-G" requirements for high school social science, math, science and other core subjects with a minimum B grade for the University of California and a C grade for Cal State.
Reed, who described the figures as "dismal," said that reducing the achievement gap has been the goal of San Jose/Silicon Valley 2020, a
program the city of San Jose and the county education office started four
years ago.
"These are the kinds of numbers that we said we would not accept,"
Reed said. "When you see this report, obviously our work is not done."
"But this is not a depressing report," Reed said. "This is a report of hope. This is a report of optimism, because we know how to do this.
This is not impossible."
Reed pointed to encouraging news in the report about 10 schools in
Santa Clara and San Mateo counties where many Hispanic students have
succeeded.
The top performing institutions for Hispanic students included
charter schools such as Renaissance Middle School and Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary School in San Jose and Aspire Phoenix High School in East Palo Alto.
Hispanic students at Rocketship Mateo Sheedy scored 921 in the state's Academic Performance Index, much higher than the California target
score on the standardized test of 800.
At another charter, KIPP Heartwood in the Alum Rock School District in East San Jose, 81 percent of Hispanic students tested proficient in algebra.
"There are educators who have figured this out," Reed said. "There
are schools that have figured this out."
Hammer said that the schools that have improved student performance by focusing on enforcing standards. "As you walk into these schools, they've got this very, clear, clear culture, this relentless culture of high expectations," Hammer said.
"And it's this commitment in this culture among all of the adults
in the school that every child is going to make it if we can just figure out
how to teach well enough," Hammer added.
Reed said that school officials should "copy" the methods used at
the 10 schools in the region where performances by Hispanic students had
improved.
"What we have to do collaboratively as a community is to figure out how to get the secret that is being used in some of these schools into all the schools and how to put together the resources so all of these schools
"That's how we're going to make it for all of our Latino kids, all our African-American kids, all of our white kids, all of our Asian kids to perform much, much better and have that chance to go to college," Reed
said.
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