Gunn High School sophomore Arjun Parikh just got his start-up funded -- an initiative that combines his love of soccer with an impulse to give.

Parikh is one of eight student grant recipients of Gunn@Your Service, a kind of parent booster club for community service that awards grants to "social entrepreneurs."

He plans to use the $200 to help launch a youth soccer camp at Cubberley Community Center this summer -- and donate proceeds to Right to Play, an international charity that provides coaches for 700,000 low-income children in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America.

"This is my first endeavor into entrepreneurship and philanthropy. We'll see how it goes," Parikh said of the project he started with six friends, Laces Soccer Camps.

The other seven student recipients of Gunn @ Your Service grants, this year, are:

• Freshman Leland Wei, who will buy a rototiller and vibration plate for his Eagle Scout project to renovate a beat-up path near the Palo Alto Duck Pond, which he hopes to complete over spring break in April

• Sophomore Divya Saini, who plans to mount an earthquake-education campaign in Palo Alto

• Junior Tatiana Grossman, who will use the funds to help Gunn's African Literacy Club ship children's books for primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa

• Junior Sungkook Peter Kim, who will provide sheet music and music stands for Gunn musicians performing for patients at the Palo Alto Veterans' Health Care Center

• Junior Praniti Sinha, who will help Gunn's Asha Club run a fundraiser for Asha for Education, an organization that provides computers, food and education to orphans in Bangalore, India

• Junior Lily Tsai, who will buy flutes to loan to music students in an afterschool music program at Costano School in East Palo Alto. In the program, Gunn Music@Costano, eight Gunn students go to Costano once a week to teach music, including flute, piano and trumpet, to more than 20 participating Costano students.

• Senior Natasha Allen, who will ship academic books to South Sudan in cooperation with Sudan-American Foundation for Education and STAND, the student arm of the Genocide Intervention Network.

Tsai said she and her sister Stephanie began teaching piano and violin at Costano three years ago, after Stephanie Tsai visited the school with the Gunn orchestra.

"Last year, we decided that since so many students in the afterschool program wanted to participate and we, as only two people, didn't have enough time to teach them all, we would try to bring in more Gunn music students to teach.

"Thus was the start of Gunn Music@Costano," Tsai said. "This year we have eight students participating."

Tsai said she'll try to buy four flutes, which would enable half the Costano flute students at a time to take the instrument home. The Palo Alto Unified School District has lent the program violins and cellos, she said.

Allen said she got interested in Sudan after taking a class at Gunn called "Facing History and Ourselves: the sociology of genocide," with teacher Ronen Habib.

"We not only learned about the causes and terrible effects of genocide but also about genocidal acts that are being committed even now," Allen said.

She started a STAND Club at Gunn, aimed at spreading the word against genocide through efforts like letterwriting to politicians. The club plans to collect books around town to send to schools in South Sudan.

"Due to the high cost of shipping, we can only send high-level books, such as college and AP textbooks," she said.

Grossman will use her grant to augment her long-standing project of helping establish libraries in primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa. That effort which she launched at the age of 12 has grown into the award-winning nonprofit Spread the Words. The organization has established libraries serving 99 African villages and primary schools where before there were none.

Grossman's mother, Lauren Janov, organized Gunn@Your Service two years ago, and this is the group's second round of grant-making. Funds are raised through an appeal letter that goes out to parents early in the year and through a Yahoo group email list.

"Our mission is about making it easy for kids and families to do community service, promoting it and building community," Janov said.

"Different kids want to do service in different ways."

Twenty-nine Bay Area high school seniors were chosen as semifinalists in the 2012 Intel Science Talent Search today, Intel officials said.

They include Jin Pan, 17, and Jean Wang, 17, both from Gunn High School.

The students are among 300 students chosen from 173 schools out of a field of more than 1,800 applicants, organizers said.

"The Intel STS encourages student to tackle challenging scientific questions and develop the skills to solve the problems of tomorrow," Intel spokesman Mark Pettinger said in a statement.

"Projects submitted for consideration cover all disciplines of science including biochemistry, chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, behavioral science, and medicine and health," Pettinger said.

Fourteen Bay Area schools are represented, with 11 of the students attending The Harker School in San Jose and four students chosen from

Bellarmine College Preparatory School, also in San Jose, Intel officials said.

Other Bay Area semifinalists attend schools in Cupertino, Fremont,

Mountain View,Pleasanton, Saratoga and San Ramon, Intel officials said.

Each semifinalist will receive a $1,000 award from the Intel Foundation with an additional $1,000 going to his or her school.

Forty of the 300 semifinalists will be named finalists on Jan. 25.

In March, the finalists will travel to Washington, D.C., where the contestants will compete for more than $1,250,000 in awards, Intel officials said.

 Winners will be announced March 13.

The Science Talent Search started in 1942 and former finalists of the contest have gone on to be named Nobel Laureates and win the National Medal of Science and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the contest's website said.

About one in six Gunn or Palo Alto high school graduates goes directly to Foothill or De Anza community college, according to the college chancellor.

Linda Thor, chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, spoke at a reception Sunday at the Palo Alto home of Elaine Andersen, a member of a Foothill College "friends" group.

Sunday's reception drew several dozen PTA and other community leaders, including Palo Alto school board member Barbara Klausner, Palo Alto Mayor Sid Espinosa, City Council member Pat Burt and State Sen. Joe Simitian.

In the fall of 2009, about 18 percent of Paly and Gunn graduates entered Foothill or De Anza, and the rate over the past decade has ranged between 13 percent and 19 percent, Thor said.

According to Foothill statistics, about 80 percent of Palo Alto students meet their goals of completing preparation for transfer or successfully transferring to a four-year university.

Between 2004 and 2009, Palo Alto students attending Foothill or De Anza transferred to about 95 different four-year institutions, including every University of California campus, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Mount Holyoke, Northeastern, Occidental, the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California and Yale, Thor said.

Foothill-De Anza students ranked No. 1 among 72 community colleges in California for UC transfers in 2010, Thor said.

The colleges' Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) program guarantees Foothill or De Anza students admission as juniors to certain UC or other campuses if they meet agreed-upon grade and course requirements.

Foothill and De Anza have TAG agreements with UC campuses at Davis, Irvine, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, as well as with some private universities, including Cornell, Thor said.

UCLA and Berkeley do not have TAG agreements with any college. However, Foothill has a "special transfer relationship" with UCLA called the Transfer Alliance Program. It does not guarantee admission, but in 2010 more than 80 percent of the Foothill honors students who used the program were admitted to UCLA, Thor said.

Andersen, the hostess of Sunday's event, is a member of the Foothill Commission, a group dedicated to promoting and raising funds for the school in the community. She received an associate's degree from Foothill in 1969 before earning her bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees from Stanford University. She is a professor of linguistics and neuroscience at the University of Southern California.

The California High School Exit Exam (CASHEE) results are out, bearing good news for Palo Alto: More than 95 percent of students pass the test on their first try.

In the Palo Alto Unified School District, 97 percent of 10th-graders passed the math section of the test, and 96 percent of students passed the English-language arts (ELA) section, according to the California Department of Education's results released Wednesday. Students must take the test for the first time in the 10th grade and then are given a few more opportunities to take it through the 12th grade if they don't pass. 

The results of the CASHEE, required by California state law since 2004 to graduate from high school, were also broken down by gender and ethnicity. For the math section of the test, the pass rates in Palo Alto were as follows: girls, 98 percent; boys, 96 percent; Asians, 100 percent; Hispanics/Latinos, 83 percent, blacks, 80 percent; and whites, 99%.

For the English section of the test, the results were: girls, 97 percent; boys, 95 percent; Asians, 99 percent; Hispanics/Latinos, 76 percent; blacks, 81 percent; and whites, 98 percent.

In Santa Clara County, Asians and whites continue to perform near the ceiling for the CASHEE. Hispanic 10th-graders showed the largest improvement from 2010-11. They demonstrated the largest improvement on the mandatory exam, seeing their pass rate go from 72-75 percent. 

By the 12th grade, approximately 94.6 percent, or 422 of 558 remaining test takers in the Class of 2011, successfully passed both the English and math portions of the test. 

In 2011, Asian 10th-graders passed the English/language arts test at a rate of 94 percent. They passed the math test at 98 percent, the same level as the previous year.

From the Class of 2011, the percentage of African-American students meeting the requirement by the time they graduate was 90.9 percent compared with last year’s 89.6 percent. For Hispanic students, the number stood 92.3 percent over last year’s 91.4 percent; for Asian students, it was 97.7 percent over 97.4 percent; and for white students, 98.4 percent over 98.1 percent

Since 2004, California law has specified that all high school students must take the CASHEE for the first time in the 10th grade. If they don’t pass the test the first time, they then have two opportunities in the 11th grade and three in the 12th, to pass the test. Students with disabilities are exempt from taking the test.

The following are pass rates for 10th graders in local districts. More results can be found on the California Department of Education's website.

Palo Alto Unifed District: Math: 904 tested, 878 passed (97%); English: 913 took, 878 passed (96%)

Fremont Union High District: Math: 2,603 tested, 2,457 passed (rate: 94%), English: 2,603 tested, 2,444 passed (94%)

Milpitas Unified District: Math: 794 tested, 704 passed (rate: 89%); English: 789 tested, 693 passed (88%)

Mountain View-Los Altos Union High District: Math: 842 tested; 788 passed (rate: 94%); English: 865 took, 773 passed (rate: 93%)

These are challenging times for secondary education. Cash-strapped school districts are cutting back; No Child Left Behind mandates test results; parents and students stress unabated. NEWSWEEK, which has been ranking the top public high schools in America for more than a decade, revamped its methodology this year in hopes of highlighting solutions. We enlisted a panel of experts—Wendy Kopp of Teach For America, Tom Vander Ark of Open Education Solutions (formerly executive director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), and Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford professor of education and founder of the School Redesign Network—to develop a yardstick that fully reflects a school’s success turning out college-ready (and life-ready) students. To this end, each school’s score is comprised of six components: graduation rate (25%), college matriculation rate (25%), AP tests taken per graduate (25%), average SAT/ACT scores (10%), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10%), and AP courses offered (5%). (For more information on how these rankings were tabulated, see our Full Methodology.)

Rank	School	City	State	Student/ Teacher Ratio   Number of students per intructor	Grad Rate   Percent of students who graduated on time (within 4 years)	AP/IB Tests   Number of AP and IB tests given per graduate in 2010	College Bound (%)   Percent of seniors who enrolled in college immediately following graduation	Avg SAT   Average score of students who took the SAT	News- week Score   Newsweek"s overall high school score, comprised of six metrics: graduation rate (25%), college matriculation rate (25%), AP tests taken per graduate (25%), SAT/ACT scores (10%), AP/IB scores (10%), and AP courses offered per graduate (5%)
26	Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics	Oklahoma City	OK	5.3	100	2.4	100	1975	1.288
27	Benjamin Franklin	New Orleans	LA	15.1	100	5.5	100	1883	1.278
28	School for Advanced Studies	Miami	FL	25.0	100	7.3	100	1768	1.276
29	Peak to Peak Charter	Lafayette	CO	16.0	100	5.7	95	NA	1.258
30	Michael E DeBakey High School for Health Professions	Houston	TX	16.1	99	5.1	100	1829	1.217
31	Highland Park	Dallas	TX	19.2	100	6.5	97	1762	1.210
32	Troy	Fullerton	CA	28.5	99	4.6	99	1917	1.209
33	Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet	Nashville	TN	22.5	100	5.8	98	1826	1.156
34	The Preuss School UCSD	La Jolla	CA	21.8	100	7.4	99	1542	1.152
35	Bronx High School of Science	Bronx	NY	23.0	100	3.7	100	1997	1.142
36	The Charter School of Wilmington	Wilmington	DE	21.0	99	4.0	99	1934	1.140
37	Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy	Aurora	IL	10.8	100	3.8	100	2046	1.138
38	Bronxville	Bronxville	NY	11.1	99	4.1	98	1891	1.102
39	South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Math	Hartsville	SC	10.1	100	3.2	100	2059	1.096
40	Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts	West Palm Beach	FL	23.5	99	5.0	99	1652	1.094
41	Dr. Ronald E. McNair Academic	Jersey City	NJ	16.3	100	5.7	99	1689	1.073
42	Henry M. Gunn	Palo Alto	CA	28.0	98	4.1	96	1942	1.072
43	Walnut Hills	Cincinnati	OH	21.3	99	4.8	97	1773	1.070
44	West Shore	Melbourne	FL	16.3	100	4.7	100	1710	1.039
45	Jericho	Jericho	NY	12.0	100	4.8	100	1782	1.039
46	Maritime and Science Technology (MAST)	Miami	FL	13.4	100	4.3	100	1721	1.037
47	Westwood	Austin	TX	29.1	98	4.6	93	1801	1.036
48	Interlake	Bellevue	WA	Not Provided	86	7.6	97	1740	1.036
49	Great Neck South	Great Neck	NY	25.1	99	3.9	98	1773	1.031
50	Rye	Rye	NY	14.1	99	4.3	98	1797	1.031

With balloons, flowers, music and pure glee, students at Gunn and Palo Alto high schools as well as Castilleja School celebrated graduations this week. Below are reports from the festivities.

Palo Alto High School (Wednesday, June, 8):

Palo Alto High School's 403 graduating seniors added an honorary member to their ranks Wednesday.

Eugene Bradford, who would have graduated with Paly's class of 1953 but joined the U.S. Marines to fight in Korea instead, got a standing ovation as he was wheeled to the podium to receive his Paly diploma from Principal Phil Winston.

"I don't need my legs to say, 'Thank you, 2011,'" a tearful Bradford said.

The ovation for Bradford followed student speeches and musical performances in a typically festive and occasionally raucous celebration that packed the Paly quad with more than 1,000 people.

Senior Class President Jack Smale recited various feats of the class -- producing dozens of National Merit Scholarship finalists, a ranking debate team, two state athletic championships and award-winning scientists and journalists.

"But what impressed me most is ... we still managed to come together as geeks, jocks, thespians, musicians, artists and more to prove that we're one class," Smale said.

Osceola Ward, a student in the Tinsley Voluntary Transfer Program, described his daily commute from "the cracked concrete and McDonald's ... that served the children of my neighborhood to the smooth sidewalks and palatial homes" of his elementary school classmates.

"I stand before you the humble child of the cities of both East Palo Alto and Palo Alto," Ward said.

"I implore you not to be content with titles and names ... but to understand that success and giving back to the community are truly one and the same".

Quinn Walker evoked the intellectual journeys made in Paly's classrooms -- to the Battle of Brandywine, the French Revolution, or the Romanian home country of math teacher Radu Toma -- as a foreshadowing of the class's world travels ahead.

"As we spread out ... we aren't really going anywhere we haven't been before," Walker said.

Holding up a scuffed home plate, Will Glazier, a member of this year's CCS Championship baseball team, likened high school to a run around the bases.

"Our journey around this diamond has taught us that being perfect has nothing to do with the end result ... but with knowing in our hearts that we held nothing back, that we did all we could for this school and community," Glazier said, urging classmates to pursue their passions even if they seem unconventional.

Wes Rapaport, winner of Paly's top honor, the Viking Award, told classmates: "If you follow your dreams and get involved in activities you have fun participating in, everything else in life will follow."

Asking all the student speakers to line up, the last one, Chirag Krishna, pointed to his classmates: "Every time I think I've done something well, a member of this class steps up and does it better.

"By the time the world realizes this, it will truly be our oyster. I speak with no shame when I say I have truly been outclassed."

Gunn High School (Wednesday, June, 8):

Amid the cheering and clouds of balloons, and the flowers either brought by relatives or dangling around their necks, the 356 graduating seniors of Gunn High School Wednesday were urged to proceed with the courage that has characterized them in their formative years and to embrace their dreams.

"Courage is falling off and climbing back on again," Principal Katya Villalobos told graduates.

"Courage is exploring heights and depths, holding on to the dream, and sometimes having to say goodbye," she said.

Quoting Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," Villalobos said: "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."

Max Lipscomb, one of two student speakers, said, "Roughly all graduation speeches say the same thing: that our school is the best, that our students go on to do many great things, that we will all be friends forever. I find it hard to believe that we will achieve all of those things simultaneously."

But referring to his two years at private school, Lipscomb emphasized the power of Gunn in providing new experiences and in enabling him to deal with hardship and personal tragedy in a positive way.

"The people there knew no hardship, and neither did I. Given what I know now, and given the opportunity to go back, I would not take it," he said.

"We have experienced personal tragedy meant for people four times our age, but still we stand," Lipscomb said. "It is my honor to stand for one final time with the Class of 2011 as we celebrate our separation."

The evening's second student speech came from Reade Levinson, who emphasized the strong and opportunity-rich community that Gunn's graduates are emerging from.

"We started in Silicon Valley, we started already half way there. Challenge yourself to find your own success," she urged.

"Don't spend all of college preparing for grad school," Levinson said.

"You won't look back, at 90 years old, and remember that French test you failed. But you will remember that time you stayed up until 3 a.m. watching 'Love Actually' and eating the best red velvet cupcakes of your life.

"Go somewhere. Do something fantastic. Making an impact can be as easy as giving a smile as you pass someone walking across the quad," she said.

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren D-San Jose, a member of Gunn's first graduating class of 1966, was on hand to deliver a speech in place of U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo D-Palo Alto, whose appearance was cancelled due to an appendectomy.

"Tonight, instead of telling you to find your passion, Anna and I tell you to find your calling, to find where you can make a difference," Lofgren said.

"Many of you have already begun," she said, referring to the counter-protests held last year against the Westboro Baptist Church's anti-gay picketing.

"On that day a problem found you, and you found a solution. And you let that solution change you."

Quoting New York Times columnist David Brooks, Lofgren added: "The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It's to lose yourself. Class of 2011, lose yourself."

In presenting the 2011 class gift, class president Ori Herschmann and vice-president Paula Jung announced that the $4,311 raised would go towards the athletics department and weight room.

"Thank you, on behalf of the Gunn community, for giving us all of these wonderful memories, and for reminding us every single day that teaching is best job in the world," Villalobos said.

Once again, a large crowd turned out for the regular meeting of the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) Board of Education on Tuesday night. This time, however, the hot-button topic was not school calendars; rather, it was a passionate discussion over whether or not the district should increase graduation requirements for high school students, in an effort to ensure a higher percentage of students will graduate being “college ready.”

Specifically, the Board is suggesting that Gunn and Paly high schools should make “A-G” requirements mandatory for all students, beginning with the graduating class of 2016, which will start school in the fall of 2012.

“A-G” refers to the requirements held by both the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems to make a student eligible for admission. It sets forth a minimum number of years students must take in various subjects—known as the “A-G” subjects—such as English, world languages, mathematics, laboratory science, visual and performing arts, and history and social sciences.

Per the district’s proposal, students would have to complete every requirement in “A-G” with a grade of “C-minus” or higher.

The proposal also suggested that waivers would be available to some students—however, what the criteria would be for receiving such as waiver was an area of confusion and concern for many at the meeting.

PAUSD Superintendent Kevin Skelly prefaced the night’s discussion of the matter by talking about the motivation behind the proposal—preparing students for an increasingly competitive job market in today’s economy, and helping to close the gap in opportunities for minority students.

“The gap between students who are well-educated and well-trained, and those who are not, is growing,” he said, suggesting that the number of jobs available to students without a college degree is limited, particularly in the Bay Area. “We have a responsibility to our students.”

Skelly introduced Debbra Lindo, the district’s director of secondary education, who presented the board with an update on how the district is progressing toward its goals for the number of students who are college-ready, and to explain the proposal of officially adopting “A-G” as the district standard.

Lindo explained that a strategic initiative was adopted in the district in 2008 that included the goals of getting 85 percent of students to graduate being UC- and CSU-eligible, and of increasing the number of minority students that are college-ready upon graduation to 50 percent, by the year 2012.

Lindo’s presentation indicated that PAUSD has already made great strides toward these goals.

In 2009, 75 percent of Gunn graduates and 76 percent of Paly graduates finished high school being college-ready; in 2010, the totals were 87 percent of Gunn graduates and 83 percent of Paly graduates.

“So we haven’t completely met our goal, but we’re very close,” said Lindo.

As far as minority groups, the totals for various races such as Hispanics and African Americans ranged from approximately 38 to 50 percent.

However, overall, on average, 80 percent of students were graduating one or two classes short of the “A-G” requirements.

Lindo said, when the topic of making “A-G” the standard for graduation was discussed with district teachers, several concerns were brought up.

Some teachers said they worried that they may have to lower their standards in order to keep up with additional requirements, or to avoid having any students score lower than a “C-minus.” Others said they worried about hurting the self-esteem of students who will require a waiver from the “A-G” requirements in order to graduate.

Some said that they worried that some students would struggle too much with a requirement like Algebra 2. Others wondered how much the district’s summer school programs would have to be revised to accommodate a larger number of students needing to make up missed courses or re-take courses in which they got a “D” grade or lower.

Lindo remained optimistic that PAUSD could adopt the new requirements and be successful at them, and pressed upon the board how important she thought it was to ensure that local youth go on in life possessing the wealth of opportunities that being college-ready upon graduation would afford them.

“I am confident that Palo Alto will not overdo it, and will do it better than everyone else,” she said.

When it came time for board members to comment on their opinion of the proposal, many spoke of their concerns over what the higher requirements would mean for lower-achieving students—would those who felt “A-G” were out of their reach feel compelled to drop out? Would a student who didn’t fully complete the requirements be denied graduation?

Board member Barbara Klausner asked, what if a traditional college degree is not the path a student wants to take in their life?

“I love the idea [of adopting “A-G”], but is it the right bar to set for most students? Maybe not for that student who dreams of going to culinary school,” Klausner said. “But, I agree with Dr. Skelly in that [requiring “A-G”] does help set a standard and a foundation for any student who has goals of [going on and being successful in life].”

Klausner said, her two biggest areas of concern were, what the criteria for receiving a waiver would be, and what to do about students who can’t grasp one of the harder courses like Algebra 2 or Geometry, who keep getting grades below the minimum.

“No student can graduate with an ‘A-G’ grade lower than a ‘C-minus?’ That’s really setting the bar high,” she said.

Skelly responded by saying, “I don’t see us not approving a waiver for a student that at least meets the California state minimum requirements for graduation. I don’t see us saying to a student, ‘OK, you’ve taken this class twice and not passed, maybe it’s time for you to drop out.’”

Board President Melissa Baten-Caswell asked, where’s the rollout plan?

“I’m nervous to vote for something like this to start in a specific year, when I haven’t seen the rollout plan, and I’m not sure the rollout plan would be ready in time.”

Many members of the community addressed the board with their feelings on the issue.

Some felt it was yet another blow to student stress.

“This sends a message that our schools are tough, and now we’re going to make them even tougher,” one parent said. “We should make ‘A-G’ a student’s default path, but not a graduation requirement. When a student doesn’t meet the default requirements, it is discussed with parent, teacher and student together. That would satisfy your goal.”

Others remarked that the board should not vote on the issue until the criteria for receiving a waiver is spelled out, implicitly, and until a plan for the 15 percent of students who are not meeting the requirements currently is devised.

“I think we need to figure out who this 15 percent of students are, why they didn’t meet the ‘A-G’ requirements, why they dropped out or were transferred to alternative programs. What’s going on there?” said Diane Gleason, a math teacher in the district. “I think giving this only two weeks and then voting on it is really premature."

The board is expected to discuss again, and then vote on, the proposed new graduation requirements during its next meeting on June 14.

The Palo Alto school district has hired a new, high-level data cruncher to analyze student performance and other testing information.

Diana Wilmot, previously coordinator of assessment and accountability for the Santa Clara County Office of Education, will come to Palo Alto to replace William Garrison, who is retiring after eight years with the district.

Wilmot will track and report on student testing data and work with teachers and principals on instructional approaches.

The research director reports on trends and comparisons in Star, SAT and AP test scores as well as percentages of students who complete a four-year-college-prep course load.

For example, a 2010 graduate who ranked in the 25th percentile in SAT scores in Palo Alto -- with a score of 1750 -- would rank in the 75th percentile if compared with students across California or across the nation, Garrison reported to the board last fall.

The average SAT score among Palo Alto students in 2010 was 635 in critical reading, 672 in math and 640 in writing, adding up to 1947.

Gunn and Palo Alto high schools ranked fourth and sixth, respectively, among California high schools on SAT scores in 2009, Garrison reported.

Wilmot previously has worked for many research institutions, including Educational Testing Services.

She holds a PhD in quantitative methods and evaluation and a master's in education from the University of California at Berkeley.

Earlier in her career she taught math and statistics at Los Altos High School.

"I'm excited to join such a distinguished education community and look forward to working with the incredible professionals at PAUSD to help make a positive difference for our students," Wilmot said.

Superintendent Kevin Skelly said, "I am thrilled that Dr. Wilmot will be on our district team.

"Our community places a high importance on accountability and measurable success for its students. Dr. Wilmot will be a wonderful support to our schools and staff in this regard," Skelly said.

With a renewed blizzard of data, Palo Alto school officials this week again are asking the Board of Education to reform the academic calendar to end the first semester before winter break, beginning in 2012-13.

The board is set to vote Tuesday on the proposal, which has upset some parents who view the earlier August school start embedded in the new calendar as an intrusion on family vacation traditions.

Polling suggests that a solid majority of parents, teachers and high school students favor pre-break final exams, often cited as a measure to ease academic stress by giving students a clean break over the December holidays.

But opinion is mixed on whether the tradeoff is worth it if it means the earlier school start date which, in 2012, would be Aug. 16 instead of Aug. 28. The earlier date is necessary to maintain two semesters that are roughly even in length.

A contingent of Gunn High School teachers testified in favor of the calendar change at the last board meeting April 26, saying the current late-January finals schedule and one-day semester break render students exhausted as they begin second semester, leading to a well-documented "third-quarter slump."

School district staff members submitted some 80 pages of polls, proposed calendars and backup data in support of their recommendation for the calendar change or -- as a secondary recommendation -- a "rollover calendar" keeping first-semester finals in January.

In sample pre-break-finals calendars through 2017-18, officials penciled in a school start date as early as Aug. 13 in 2015 and as late as Aug. 18 in 2016.

Past calendars, going back 15 years, had start dates that fluctuated between Aug. 21 in 2006 and Sept. 8 in 1998 -- and first-semester finals in January.

Assistant Superintendent Scott Bowers suggested that a "calendar advisory committee" consisting of staff, students and parents could be convened to hash out details of future calendars.

This week, board members will vote only on calendars for 2012-13 and 2013-14, with a proposed school start date of Aug. 15 in 2013.

The packet of data assembled by Bowers also includes a table of start dates for other area high schools, nearly all of which have made the switch to pre-break finals.

The table includes 2011 start dates ranging from Aug. 15 in Mountain View-Los Altos, San Jose Unified and Santa Clara Unified to Aug. 25 in the Sequoia Union High School District.