The students at the two high schools received exceptional results on the California Standardized Testing and Reporting assessment. District students increased their scores up to 18 percentage points from last year's national percentile ranking on the California Achievement Tests, 6th edition (CAT/6), part of the STAR testing students take every May.

Steve Lopez, district director of educational services, said two of the contributing factors to this commendation include a renewed focus on instructional strategies and state testing standards. Last year, he said, Los Gatos High School's annual yearly progress scores dropped, causing a district-wide effort by teachers to analyze how they were covering testing standards in their curriculum. While Lopez said teachers do not teach students to pass the test, they now cover textbook material relevant to the test before the testing and cover additional nonrelevant curriculum after the testing.

Teachers looked at when the state testing dates were, he said, and then realigned the values of their curriculum to help students become better prepared.

"The scores are going up at both high schools because of the teachers, the students and the parents," Lopez said. "I think there is a very good relationship there. The teachers see the importance of the Advanced Placement and STAR tests, and the parents are reinforcing the importance of this at home."

Lopez added that the reemphasis on STAR took place at a time when classrooms also had high participation levels and pass rates on AP tests. He said the principals of both high schools—Trudy McCulloch at Los Gatos and Kevin Skelly at Saratoga—made the STAR testing a yearlong process of awareness for faculty, parents and students, rather than a short-lived priority.

The CAT/6 scores parallel the district students' top scores of 97 percent on the California High School Exit Exam and a 78 percent at the advanced or proficient level on the California Standards Test. Student achievement on each of these state assessments ranks both high schools as two of the most successful schools in the county, state and nation.

From 2002 to 2003, district math scores on STAR jumped from 83 to 92 percent for ninth graders; from 85 to 89 for 10th graders; and from 83 to 93 percent for 11th graders.

Jeanne-Marie Rachlin, math department chairwoman at Los Gatos High, said the large increase in scores specifically at Los Gatos reflects a lot of teamwork from the 13-member department. Math teachers met in the fall about once a week on their 30-minute lunch breaks to gulp down sandwiches and propose suggestions to improve the STAR testing results.

While Rachlin said a large part of the improvement came from looking at what needed to change, another aspect was making the students more aware of the seriousness of the test.

"We knew we could do better than we were doing," she said.

During the two days of intensive testing during May, Rachlin said teachers were advised not to give students homework, so that even the best pupils didn't have to feel distracted or stressed with an additional workload.

Rachlin said math teachers made a few areas of their curriculum more rigorous and aligned their courses with state standards. She said they also taught students test-preparation concepts such as exposing them to more multiple-choice testing, since this is the format of STAR. Teachers also held cumulative review sessions before the testing and encouraged students to take tests without calculators because they are not permitted on STAR.

"We gave them some tests without calculators so they could get that practice," Rachlin said.

District Superintendent Cindy Ranii said the staff deserves recognition for the dramatic improvements, and the results demonstrate to the community that the students represent the quality of the schools.

"I'm thrilled," she said. "It's great. It reflects an extremely strong instruction program and shows that our teachers are in line with California content standards."