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The Paly Voice

The Student News Site of Palo Alto High School

The Paly Voice

The Student News Site of Palo Alto High School

The Paly Voice

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District falls short of its academic achievement goals

School Board President Camille Townsend giving an dress to students. Townsend is a supporter of changing graduation requirements to include A-G completion. “I am so supportive of A-G for all kids,” Townsend said. [Photo by Amanda Carlsson]
According to a recent study, the Palo Alto Unified School District has not met its expectations of increasing the percentage of high school students eligible to attend a University of California college.

The A-G requirements are the minimum number of credits in certain subjects necessary for admittance to a University of California college.

During a school board meeting earlier this month, Dina Wilmot, the district coordinator of research and evaluation, gave a presentation outlining how well the district is currently preparing its students in terms of A-G completion, college attendance numbers for graduates, and their social preparedness once in college. The data was compared to goals set forth in the District’s 2008 Strategic Plan intended to increase student performance.

A-G completion

The study evaluated the percentage of PAUSD students who completed the University of California A-G requirements. In the PAUSD strategic plan created in 2008, the goal was for 85 percent or more of PAUSD students graduating in 2012 to meet these requirements. At the end the 2011-2012 school year  81 percent of students reached this goal. However, the general trend shows a 6 percent improvement since 2008, according to Wilmot.

“The trends across the district look great,” School Board Member Barbara Klausner said.

Underrepresented minorities have also fallen short of this year’s goal of a 50 percent increase in A-G completion from 2008, registering only a 33 percent increase in completion rate for the class of 2012. Currently, 52 percent of minority students are meeting the A-G requirement, according to Wilmot.

“We have made progress but there is still a lot of hard work to be done to find the more intractable cases,” said Kim Bomar, co-chair of Parent Advocates for Student Success, a parent organization which advocates for minority students.

College attendance

College attendance numbers have increased district-wide since 2008. Ninety-two percent of the class of 2012 self-reported that they would attend either a two-year or four-year college last spring. This number is up from 82 percent in 2008, and is well above the national college-bound average of 63 percent. Even among those in the class of 2012 who did not complete A-G, 75 percent reported going on to college.

Even if graduates do not attend college immediately after high school, many may enroll sometime later.

“We want to make sure that they don’t close any doors for themselves and that we keep them open,” School Board President Camile Townsend said, regarding students who choose to go to college later on. “That’s one of the reasons that I am so supportive of A-G for all kids.”

Social preparedness

The final part of the study was a survey was emailed to PAUSD alumni currently in college to assess how academically and socially prepared the alumni felt for college life. These results were compared to those from a group of other high schools similar to Palo Alto and Gunn high school. The report showed that though just as academically prepared for college as other survey responders, Paly and Gunn students did not feel feel as socially prepared.

The survey also features a written response section, where college attendees from Paly and Gunn  give advice to current high school students hoping to attend college. The full list of student responses is available at PAUSD.org.

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