2 EDCAL January 21, 2019
High school helps students close gap, excel on AP exams
The state release of academic data high-
lights how San Benito High School in
Hollister is helping students make sig-
nificant strides academically while closing
opportunity gaps for a variety of student
groups, including those traditionally under-
served in the migrant, special education and
socio-economically disadvantaged catego-
ries. The data, from multiple sources, shows
students are achieving academic growth
compared to state and global peers through
improvement in multiple categories.
Advanced Placement success
The October release of Advanced
Placement data showed that SBHS stu-
dents outperformed both the state and
global passing rate averages for the second
consecutive year in AP courses including
English Literature, European History, U.S.
History, Psychology, Spanish Literature,
Studio Art and French.
More than a quarter of the approxi-
mately 3,000 students are enrolled in at
least one AP course in the 2018-19 school
year, continuing a five-year trend in which
enrollment in the 19 courses offered on
campus has increased by 351 students. The
number of AP exams taken has increased
by nearly 500 over the past half-decade and
seven of SBHS’s AP courses now have an
enrollment of 100 or more students.
What’s more, there is no dispropor-
tionality in the percentage of white and
Hispanic students enrolled in AP courses
compared to the overall school enrollment.
“The increase in AP student enroll-
ment and exams taken validate our goal of
increasing access to higher levels of learn-
ing for all students,” said Principal Adrian
Ramirez. “Our students and teachers should
be commended for continuing to improve
the overall performance of our AP program,
while also continuing to increase enrollment
and the number of exams taken.”
The school commits $20,000 annually
to help students offset the $94 cost of tak-
ing AP exams, and Superintendent Shawn
Tennenbaum said the district intends to
increase that number by $5,000 this year to
help even more students for whom afford-
ing the tests may be an obstacle to taking
them.
With that financial assistance, Ramirez
said, “our district has made a notable impact
in removing a significant barrier to taking
the tests,” which, if passed with a score of
3 or higher out of a possible 5, can pro-
vide students with college credit in those
subjects, reducing the amount and cost of
classes once they get to college.
The number of SBHS taking four AP
tests has doubled and the number taking
five tests has tripled in recent years, accord-
ing to data released by the school. Thirteen
AP courses had a testing rate of greater
than 85 percent of students last academic
year and every AP Math and English course
had more than 90 percent of students take
the tests.
The district has identified certain areas
of growth, including the overall passing
rates in math and science, increased male
enrollment in AP courses and a goal to have
every AP student take the corresponding
test for that class.
“While we have many aspects of our AP
program to celebrate, our work is not done,”
Ramirez said. “We are well aware of specific
areas of improvement and will continue to
provide support in those areas.”
Ramirez said at a recent Board of
Trustees meeting that an increased focus on
AP classes has and will continue to increase
the rigor in non-AP classes as well.
SBAC state testing
In a recent report to the Board of Trustees
on the Smarter Balanced Assessment
Consortium testing administered to all
11th-grade students in the Spring of 2017-
18, Director of Educational Services Elaine
Klauer said that SBHS students for the first
time exceeded the state average in math
overall and were above the state average
in every student group (Socioeconomically
Disadvantaged, English learners, Migrant,
SPED, Latino and White).
“This is a big, big deal for our Math
Department, for our students, and for our
teachers,” Klauer told the board.
Students exceeded the overall state aver-
age in English Language Arts and scored at
or above the state in four out of six student
groups. SBHS migrant students continue
to outperform the state migrant average
by almost double digits in both English
Language Arts and math, as they have for
four consecutive years. Socio-economically
disadvantaged students at SBHS outper-
formed the state in both ELA (54 to 46 per-
cent) and math (30 percent to 20 percent).
“That’s a huge achievement gap that
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Continued from page 1
State Board of Education. “There are few
people in public education with her breadth
of knowledge. Her experience gives her a
strong platform from which to lead.”
Alcalá is a public school parent, a native
of Tijuana, Mexico, an English Learner, and
she and her siblings are the first in her fam-
ily to attend college in the U.S. She served
for more than 12 years at CDE, where she
was deputy superintendent in the Teaching
and Learning Support Branch.
During her tenure there, Alcalá over-
saw the creation of the English Learner
Division, revamped the migrant education
San Benito High School has been showing strong student achievement in state testing.
we’re starting to close,” Klauer said.
English learner students at SBHS moved
from zero percent met/exceeded in Math in
2017 to 7 percent met/exceeded in 2018.
A-G data report
According to more data presented to
the Board in October, the percentage of
SBHS graduates meeting a-g requirements
– the minimum coursework required for
University of California and California
State University admission – grew 7.2 per-
cent between 2016-17 and 2017-18, includ-
ing a nearly 10 percent jump for female
graduates and 9.3 percent for Hispanic
grads. Data shows that SBHS Migrant
Education graduates have outperformed
the state a-g course requirement percentage
for five consecutive years and the number
of students meeting a-g requirements grew
15.5 percent.
Tennenbaum noted that the academic
success of students is the result of a sus-
tained group effort.
“San Benito High School District
is proud to have such a dedicated and
focused faculty, support staff, administra-
tive team, student body, parents, and Board
of Trustees,” he said. “We have made sig-
nificant academic progress in the past few
years and we look forward to continued
growth and much success in and out of the
classroom. Our goals are lofty, but each day
we are making progress as a school and as
a district.”
This article was submitted by the San
Benito High School District.
program, initiated the Seal of Biliteracy to
recognize students fluent in two or more
languages, and oversaw the development of
the English language arts/English language
development framework and standards,
which aim to improve language develop-
ment for English learners.
In addition, she oversaw the imple-
mentation of the $500 million California
Career Pathways Trust grants and initiated
CDE’s first California Science Technology
Engineering and Mathematics Symposium.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in political
science from the University of California,
San Diego, and a master’s in planning
administration and social policy from the
Harvard University School of Education.
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