LAUSD Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson

LA Unified increased its official graduation rate to a new high last school year, with 72.2 percent of students receiving a diploma, the district announced this week. The number is a two-point increase over the previous year, which was also a record high.

Since 2009-10, when the state began using four-year cohort rates as the official measuring stick for graduation, LA Unified has increased its rate by 10 percentage points.

“I am very proud of the work we are doing – not only in raising our graduation rates, but in preparing our graduates to enter college or the workforce,” said Superintendent Michelle King in a statement. “Our students, parents, faculty and staff have worked together as a team, and they can take great satisfaction in this accomplishment.”

Graduation rates also were raised to a new high in the state of California, up to 82 percent, the sixth year in a row the rate has climbed, the East Bay Times reported.

The news comes as LA Unified is entering the final few weeks of school under a new raised bar for graduation requirements. The “A though G” series of classes, which if a student passes all with a C will make them eligible for admission info California’s public universities, have presented extra challenges for the district.

In the fall, LA Unified had a projected graduation rate of 54 percent because to many students being unprepared for the new A-G standards. Due to a $15 million credit recovery program that has been hailed as widely successful by district officials but criticized by some education experts, the last projected A-G completion rate calculated by the district was 68 percent — but predicted to potentially top 80 percent.

The district will not be doing any more A-G projections for the rest of the school year, and the preliminary graduation will not be fully calculated until November. Students who complete summer courses will also be eligible to graduate with the class 2016. 

Current efforts by LA Unified in the final few weeks are focused on contacting students shy of credits and getting them enrolled in credit recovery or summer classes. Students are being tracked based on their “tier.” For example, a Tier 1 student is missing one or two classes, a Tier 2 is missing three or four, etc.

“We are focusing on our tiered efforts” said Frances Gipson, LA Unified’s chief academic officer. “Is a student off by one class? Are we monitoring a student who is close to that edge? We have identified steps for each student depending on what tier they are at.”

Gipson also pointed out that since A though G is new this year, as is the credit recovery program, the district is sending officals out into the field to learn what is working.

“We are going out into the filed and meeting with counselors and students and mining those most promising practices thus far. This has ben a pilot program,” Gipson said.

In a May 2 memo from Gipson to King, some schools that are doing interesting credit recovery work was pointed out.

LAUSD report on A through G completion rates.

There is a wide gulf of disparity when it comes to the performance of races and subgroups in LA Unified’s A through G completion and graduation rates, but these groups have come a long way and are doing better than ever before.

Recent district reports breaking down the graduation rate as it heads into the final six weeks of the school year show 68 percent of seniors are currently on track to complete their A-G courses with all D’s or better. A-G completion is a key component required for graduation and is being implemented for the first time this year. The courses are required for acceptance into California’s public universities, although C’s are needed to qualify.

Due to a $15 million credit recovery program that has signed up thousands of students to retake courses after school, on weekends and over holiday breaks, the district has predicted the graduation rate could rise as high as a record 80 percent. But peeling back the layers of the 68 percent mark reveals other numbers that are troubling yet familiar, as African-Americans, Latinos, English learners, foster students and students with disabilities are far behind their peers on A-G completion.

“The racial disparities in achievement and discipline have been consistently on the front burner. It means we need more support, it means we need to have more personalization and it means that you can’t just do more of the same,” said board member Monica Garcia, who is a strong advocate for the A-G standards. “I think it is about a system learning how to succeed with all populations, and LA Unified has more to do.”

Despite the disparities, the district has made big strides over the years when it comes to race and subgroup performance. According to a UCLA report from 2013, 21 percent of African-American high school students were on track with A-G courses in 2008, compared to 59 percent today. Latino students had a 24 percent on track rate then, compared to 67 percent today. English learners had an overall 9 percent on track status, compared to 29 percent for long-term learners and 24 percent for short-term learners today.

Asian students and white students, who are outpacing their peers today, have also made significant strides. Asians have gone from 58 percent on track in 2008 to 83 percent today, and white students have gone from 45 percent to 74 percent. Overall the district had made progress in all students who are getting C’s or better in all A-G classes, from 18 percent in 2005 to 48 percent as of March 7.

When asked about the low performance of African-American students on A-G, LA Unified Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson said the district is taking various steps to help those students and new data coming soon will show that more African-American students from LA Unified are getting into college than ever before.

“We are working with UCLA on a really strong collaborative, and we have seen our numbers increase with our connective efforts around culturally proficient teaching and pedagogy. We have also done some partnering with the College Board and our partners at UCLA making sure we are developing that college-going culture,” Gipson said. “This year we have a record number of students getting into UCLA and our historically black colleges. Those numbers should be out soon.”

She added, “We are doing some intentional practice and research and study and learning from what is working best in our field for our learners.”

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer at a recent board meeting said the district is focused on bringing more equity to all its students.

“I’ve said this before and want to continue to emphasize that we are striving to bridge the education gap between the haves and the have-nots and give every student a path to quality education and graduation. That remains the civil rights struggle of our day,” he said.

The district’s 141,000-plus English learners remain among the biggest challenge when it comes to A-G because some of the courses essentially require English fluency.

“We have seen a lot of autonomy given to local districts and schools to figure [racial disparities] out. The other groups that are really struggling are English learners, they are not even really eligible to take those A-G courses,” said Sara Mooney, an education program associate at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, which has advocated for the district to keep the A-G standards. “There is a big concern, even though there is differentiated instruction and a lot to of autonomy, we really need to see a greater push for some racial equity and some real supports for African-American students and for English learners.”

The news of the potentially record-breaking graduation rate came mere weeks after a projection in January showed only 54 percent of seniors were on pace to complete their “A though G” course requirements for graduation. Within a month, the district said that number had jumped to 63 percent and was expected to climb to 80 percent, in large part because of its new $15 million credit recovery program.

While district officials and some board members are saluting the credit recovery program, some academic scholars and institutions are skeptical of online credit recovery programs, saying they are an easy way to boost graduation rates without boosting student learning.

“It looks very fishy,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an editor of Education Next and research fellow at the Hoover Institution. “I think that we all need to be extremely skeptical that [LA Unified] can make that amount of progress in such a short amount of time and have it be meaningful.”

In the credit recovery program, seniors without enough credits to graduate retake classes during free periods, after school, on Saturdays and during the winter break. Many of the courses are online and have either a teacher running the class along with a computer program — known as blended learning — or an all-online course known as virtual learning. One online program in wide use by the district, Edgenuity, has students taking eight five-hour sessions online. If students prove proficiency with the material they receive a “C” grade. A’s and B’s aren’t an option.

LA Unified leaders, including Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson, defended the credit recovery program as academically sound.

“Whether it’s online or any other credit recovery course, it’s the same. It is still an LA Unified teacher working with LA Unified students,” Gipson told a group of reporters on Feb. 23 after she made a presentation to the school board about the credit recovery program. Gipson also said the district had worked with California universities and colleges to make sure the online credit recovery programs are approved by them.

But Petrilli and others question the academic value of online credit recovery courses. A report in September issued by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL, was highly critical.

“This doesn’t come close to passing the smell test,” Petrilli said. “Unfortunately, we’ve seen all across the country urban districts get very excited about credit recovery programs and we have very little confidence that they are maintaining academic standards while catching kids up. It looks like a very rational but dishonest response to accountability systems that are now holding schools and districts accountable for increasing their high school graduation rates.”

A 2012 report by the Center for Public Education pointed to a lack of overall regulation of credit recovery programs, as well as a lack of any full academic study of their effectiveness. The report found that credit recovery “is a highly decentralized, unregulated and under-researched dropout prevention initiative. There is little information on enrollment numbers or effectiveness. So far, credit recovery programs have not been evaluated for rigor or equal access either.”

The report also said the number of district-initiated online learning programs is unknown and “there is no coherent definition emerging among states that cite credit recovery programs in statutes or administrative code.”

With LA Unified set to potentially break its graduation rate by riding the back of its credit recovery program, more critics are taking notice. The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board joined the ranks of the skeptics recently, saying, “Some legitimate questions are now being raised about whether all these students have truly mastered the material that had previously eluded them.”

After Gipson’s progress report on the credit recovery program to the LA Unified school board’s Committee of the Whole on Feb. 23, board members had mostly positive things to say. Only board member Monica Ratliff raised any questions, saying, “Are these credit recovery courses really rigorous A through G courses? How do we know? What’s our evidence? And are we making sure that the ultimate diploma is the same for everyone?”

Petrilli pointed to a lack of outside studies of online credit recovery programs, and that most of the evidence of their effectiveness comes from the companies that make the programs. Edgenuity’s web page, for example, contains many reports highlighting how the program has helped districts around the country boost graduation rates. Petrilli said these online programs are injecting vendors into the setting of academic graduation standards like never before.

“I think there needs to be an external exam, external to the school and external to the vendor that the kid can in fact show that he has mastered algebra II or whatever it is,” Petrilli said. “But when the assessment is embedded in the program, it is the vendor’s own program, and it’s all controlled by the vendor and the district, there is no way to ensure some measure of quality control or academic standards. I think we are further degrading the high school diploma, and we don’t have a good way of knowing if the diploma LAUSD is handing out is going to mean anything.”

Mike Szymanski contributed to this article. 

An LAUSD progress report released this week shows the projected A though G completion rate for the class of 2016 has risen to 63 percent. (Credit: LAUSD)

LA Unified appears to be making significant progress on its projected graduation rate this year through a “very personalized approach,” with a new report stating the district may even surpass last year’s record rate of 74 percent.

A January progress report obtained by LA School Report showed that only 54 percent of seniors were on track to meet their “A though G” course requirements for graduation. That report included all data from the fall semester but did not include any from the district’s $15 million credit recovery program, which began in late fall. But now a new progress report including some data from the credit recovery program shows that 63 percent of seniors are on track to complete their A-G courses.

According to the report released Friday, 17 percent of seniors are missing only one or two courses. With the credit recovery program making progress on getting many of them into the courses they need, “there is optimism,” said LA Unified Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson.

“These two predictive bands (63 percent + 17 percent) could potentially result in exceeding the 2014-15 graduation rates, with higher expectations. We continue to provide additional pathways through our A-G recovery efforts as we continue an ‘all means all’ performance mindset,” the report states.

Students calling for better A-G implementation protest outside LAUSD headquarters.

By Evelyn Macias

It should come as no surprise to any of us that nearly half of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) high school students are not on track to meet their A-G (required graduation and college prep) courses to graduate, as reported last week by LA School Report.

News outlets reported this last year when they covered protests held outside LAUSD headquarters by hundreds of students, parents and education advocacy groups who demanded the renewal of A-G, and the creation of an intervention plan to ensure that students would complete the required coursework with a “C” grade or better, so that they could graduate and, if they so desired, attend a UC or CSU school. The school board responded to their requests by lowering the required passing grade for A-G classes from a “C” to a “D” stating that students needed a diploma to graduate and ignoring the larger issue – accountability for quality instruction.

My heart broke as I saw students make the plea to school board members during an LAUSD meeting to raise the standards for them and to believe in them. I had worked alongside students, parents and advocacy groups ten years earlier in the passing of A-G, and here I was again with a new group asking for an incremental adjustment — more A-G classes, quality instruction and accountability.

Why our children would have to ask the district to make college prep courses — or quality instruction in each classroom — available to them is beyond comprehension, because this should be an obvious component of their education. One thing is clear, however, and that’s that students have few choices when it comes to getting the education they deserve.

When desperate parents seek options out of failing traditional schools through school choice or charter schools, which are more autonomous public schools, opponents immediately cry “corporate” takeover. Equally, when students and their parents raise their voices to demand a high quality education for all, as in the education equality lawsuit, Vergara v. California, their actions too are denounced as being part of a corporate conspiracy to privatize our public education system. It seems as if any effort by parents to seek an equitable education for their children is maligned and aligned with corporate interests. This is an insult to injury. Not only are parents and their children forced to endure a broken education system, but they are also forced to remain in it. How long will our leadership continue to kowtow to a system that holds our children and their future hostage?

Just as children and their parents have rightly chanted for the past ten years: “A-G is our right: we have a right to a quality education,” they continue to chant today — unsure of who will champion their cause for education equity. To put the blame solely on the LAUSD for the current skeletal remains of a once robust education system is unfair. We need to go further. We need to look at state policies, legislation and labor agreements that have, over the course of decades, eroded and diminished the rights of children, low-income working families, and ALL families, by claiming the higher moral ground for employees, while much of our leadership remains silent.

Our children are falling through the cracks, while we stand and watch. Who besides their parents and student advocacy groups will step up?

Evelyn Macias is the mother of Julia Macias, one of nine student plaintiffs behind the education equality lawsuit, Vergara v. California.

A protestor outside LAUSD headquarters on June 10, 2014. t

As the LA Unified school board today prepares to debate fixes to its implementation of college prep graduation requirements, hundreds of people are expected to rally outside the district’s downtown headquarters in favor of the proposal.

The rally is scheduled for 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., roughly the same time the board is expected to be discussing the topic. The Unted Way, which is organizing the rally, said more than 500 people are expected.

The rally supports a resolution that calls on the board to address a growing problem created 10 years ago when it passed a new set of college-prep high school graduation requirements called A through G.

Designed to equalize access to college-preparing courses, it has backfired in that an estimated 75 percent of students in the class of 2017 — the first year the new standards take place — are not on pace to graduate.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines has called the A through G standards unrealistic and suggested to the Los Angeles Times that he is favor of reducing them. But the Equity on A-G: Re-affirming Our Commitment to A-G Life Preparation for All  resolution — co-sponsored by Mónica García and Steve Zimmer — essentially calls on the district to double down on its efforts and figure out better ways to get students to meet the standards.

The resolution calls for a district-wide audit of the A through G program, the creation of an intervention plan for schools failing to meet the standards and a requirement of an Individual Graduation Plan for all seniors.

“This resolution rings the alarm,” Elmer Roldán, Director of Education at United Way, said in a statement. “The community has fought to increase access to A-G for ten years. While more students have access to college today, students are still not given a high school diploma that allows them to choose their own path. The community is calling for an all hands on deck response to a policy that has not been effectively implemented.”