Many school districts apparently have inflated the numbers of  graduating seniors they say have the grades and course completion to qualify for a four-year state university. But probably none has overstated it as much as San Jose Unified.

Until this year,  the district had been claiming that two-thirds of its graduating seniors were eligible to enter a California State University or University of California school. Last summer, it learned that it had been calculating that number wrong for years. Instead of the 64 to 66 percent rate it had reported for six straight years, the corrected number dropped to 41.3 percent for the class of 2008.

San Jose Unified’s numbers are significant. With the class of 2002, it became the first district to adopt as the district’s standard curriculum the 15 courses that the CSU and UC systems require for admission. Students must get at least a C grade in those courses.

Advocates for minority students, such as the Education Trust-West, cited San Jose Unified’s impressive numbers as reason for every district to adopt the rigorous a-g curriculum as well. The 66 percent proportion of USC-eligible seniors that San Jose Unified claimed in 2007 was 31 percentage points higher than the state average and 14 percentage points higher than the county average.

San Jose Unified still has a strong case to make for its a-g requirement – just not as big a boast. Even at 41 percent for 2008, the CSU-eligible rate was 7 percent points higher than the state average. And the 29 percent rate for Hispanics was 7 percentage points above the state average and 6 percentage points higher than Hispanics in Santa Clara County.

San Jose Unified’s  dropout rate hasn’t risen and its graduation rate hasn’t fallen  since it implemented the a-g requirement.

San Jose Unified adopted a-g under former Superintendent Linda Murray. Ironically, a team working for Murray at Ed Trust-West, where she is now superintendent in residence, discovered the error while examining the individual transcripts of students at two San Jose Unified high schools. Their figures didn’t jibe with the district’s.  (Listen to my interview of Murray on why districts should adopt an a-g curriculum.)

As it turns out, the district was using old CSU admission criteria to determine eligibility. Before 2002, students with only one year of foreign language could be admitted; that’s now two years. The district also included all students with a 2.0 or C- grade point average, which included students with D grades in individual courses. Any D grade in an a-g course is a disqualifier.

San Jose Unified officials say that the district reviewed the calculations after Ed Trust told them about the disparities last summer and have stopped using the bad figures in presentations.

Murray, who continues to be a strong advocate of the a-g curriculum, said that districts self-report the data, and some use lax criteria. One districts counts any student who takes Algebra II as CSU-eligible, regardless of the grade. Other districts may be counting courses that are not UC-approved. A 2004-05 study by WestEd, which also looked at a large sample of individual transcripts, determined the statewide eligibility rate at 23.5 percent – much lower than districts statewide reported rate last year.

In two years, when the statewide longitudinal data base known as CALPADS is fully running, districts’ rates should finally be accurate.

By John Fensterwald on November 19th, 2009