Few Latinos at SVHS are on track for four-year colleges

This year, only five of the 75 students in freshman honors English class at Sonoma Valley High School are Latino. The high school student population is 37 percent Latino, but that ratio doesn’t hold in the Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes that are critical to gain entrance to four-year universities. In the most advanced English, math and science classes, there are usually only one or two Latino students out of the 30 to 45 students taking that particular class.
Improving that ratio is one of the goals that the high school has outlined in the detailed plan it prepares to maintain accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
The high school is making changes, but freshman year is really too late.
“If we want our Latino kids to access honors and AP courses, it starts in elementary school,” said Louann Carlomagno, director of curriculum for the Sonoma Valley Unified School District. She said that a critical milestone is that kids are redesignated English-proficient by fifth grade so that they will be in college-prep classes freshman year.
“You’re really targeting kids – they have great potential, but maybe just need a little bit of support,” she said.
The numbers at SVHS are marginally better for classes like Algebra 2, Math 4 and Lab Biology where Latinos have made up between 10 and 25 percent of students over the past four years. The only classes that buck the trend are AP Spanish Language, which is well over 50 percent Latino and AP Spanish Literature in which all 13 students this year are Latino.
The so-called A to G requirements are a four-year plan to prepare students to go straight into the CSU or UC system out of the high school. The California Department of Education tracks how many kids graduate having met those requirements. An average of 42 percent of total SVHS graduates fulfilled those requirements between 1997 and 2007, compared to an average of 25 percent of Latino grads. The gap between white and Latino students meeting those requirements has persisted at around 20 percent.
Meanwhile, Latino students account for a disproportionate number of dropouts, making up an average of 50 percent of total high school dropouts between 1997 and 2007.
When English-learners enter high school, a team of teachers looks at writing samples, grades, how well they did on the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) and other factors, and then place each student individually. Previously, the high school has offered four levels of English Language Development (ELD) English and a Transition English class. Last year, the district cut ELD 4 and Transition English and moved those students into college-prep English. The students additionally take an academic language development course.
“The idea was to try to have our Latino students be prepared to have an opportunity to attend a four-year college if that was their choice,” said Carlomagno. “It’s a general trend across the states that ELL students get caught in that intermediate phase. That’s understanding academic language, being able to read with fluency. That’s a challenge.”
All English-learners have to take the annual California English Language Development Test, which is sent home to parents with an explanation in Spanish. There are five CELDT levels from beginning to advanced. One might talk to a student at level three who is sharp and expressive, seemingly completely fluent with no accent whatsoever, but who is a CELDT level 3 or 4 because his or her written English and reading comprehension isn’t at the same level.
The high school is also reaching out to parents, primarily through monthly English Language Advisory Council (ELAC) meetings, which attract between a dozen and several dozen parents of English-learners. In 2007, Spanish was the primary language at home for 473 SVHS students.
An additional way that SVHS supports promising students is through the AVID program, which has been used in California schools for the past 25 years. AVID stands for Advancement through Individual Determination and the program supports students from economically disadvantaged homes, many of whom are first-generation college students. The district now has AVID down through the middle school level. There were about 88 kids in the AVID class this year, 68 of them Latinos. According to the CDE, approximately 86 percent of AVID students in the state complete the A to G requirements for UC and CSU, and 75 percent of AVID students were accepted to a four-year college in 2005.