9th-Grader May Have Tested Out of 5 College Courses

Like many of his classmates, George Colindres will graduate Friday from Eagle Rock Junior High School with a ninth-grade diploma, euphoric at becoming a high school sophomore.

But unlike his classmates--or other ninth-graders in the Los Angeles Unified School District--Colindres has a strong chance of entering high school having already earned credits for five college classes. Colindres, a student at a magnet school for gifted junior high students on the Eagle Rock High School campus, is expected to be the magnet’s first ninth-grader to earn that much college credit by passing Advanced Placement tests, school officials said.

Although test results will not be known until mid-July, Colindres’ teachers said they are confident that he passed the tests he took this spring for European history, biology and Spanish literature. In the eighth grade, he passed the U.S. history and Spanish language Advance Placement tests.

Colindres will enter high school with enough credits to skip most of his first year of college.

That achievement is evidence of Colindres’ considerable academic talents, but it’s also the kind of performance that can be expected when gifted students are nurtured by a program, such as the one at Eagle Rock High School, which pushes them to reach their potential, teachers said.

“Of course, the ability to pass the tests is not so much an IQ score,” said Kailim Toy, the teacher who started the AP preparation program at Eagle Rock, “but a matter of how willing you are to work and set standards.”

The Eagle Rock magnet program, one of three in the Los Angeles Unified School District that prepares its gifted students for the tests, sets very high standards and its students have had increasing success in passing AP tests. The magnet program has about 100 students and about 20 took AP tests in a variety of subjects this spring.

The Eagle Rock program began preparing students for the tests in 1985--very recently compared to the magnet program at Walter Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood, which has been preparing its students for the tests for 17 years.

Students at the magnets (the third is at Tarzana’s Portola Junior High School campus) usually earn credit by passing Advanced Placement tests for two or three college classes, said Paul Mertens, coordinator of Reed’s magnet. Reed has had a few ninth-graders pass five tests, but the achievement is rare, he said.

“If it’s Advanced Placement and you’re dealing with eighth- and ninth-graders, you’re dealing with exceptional students, especially if they get five,” Mertens said. “It’s a challenge, but we do it because the students are ready. And if they’re ready, why hold them back?”

Toy has the same philosophy. Toy, who teaches history at the Eagle Rock magnet, initiated an AP preparation program there in 1985 by encouraging an exceptional ninth-grader to take the U.S. history AP test.

The student passed. By 1988, eight students were studying with Toy after school and on weekends for tests in U.S. and European history and last year, another magnet teacher began preparing more students for the biology test.

Next year, Eagle Rock will take another step. Magnet program teachers will offer AP test preparation classes not only for gifted students, but for eighth- and ninth-graders enrolled in regular classes at Eagle Rock High School, which serves grades 7 through 12, Toy said.

“We’ve always been under pressure to help the underachievers, but sometimes we need to focus on the top end,” he said. “If students have the tenacity, if they have the motivation to achieve, then we need to try to accommodate them.”

AP tests were designed for 11th- and 12th-graders who want to earn credit for classes they would otherwise be required to take in their first year of college.

Of some 463,000 students nationwide who last year took AP tests, only 564 were ninth-graders, said Nathaniel Allyn, director of Advanced Placement in the Western United States for the College Board, which also administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT.

“It’s not unique, but it’s fairly rare,” Allyn said, referring to a junior high school student entering high school with credit for five college classes.

“It certifies that a ninth-grader has acquired the knowledge or skills required of a freshman at a place like Berkeley or New York University.”

To prepare for the tests, Eagle Rock’s magnet students must attend after-school classes, read extra chapters in literature, economics and other subjects and understand college-level material, Toy said.

Although results of Colindres’ tests are not yet known, Toy and other teachers said they are certain he will pass. Among other indicators, the student scored well above passing on his first two AP tests, has consistently done well in preparation classes and is a top magnet student, they said.

“He’s disciplined and he has a mature approach,” Toy said. “It’s a case of a 25-year-old mind in a 15-year-old body.”

But in an interview last week, Colindres, sporting a crew cut, black T-shirt and sneakers and holding a tennis racket in his hand, shrugged off the distinction of his achievement.

“Sometimes people expect you to know too much,” he said. “Other students are smart too. It’s not like I’m super smart. Everyone has potential.”

Colindres next year will attend North Hollywood High School’s magnet for gifted high school students and may take more AP tests, he said. But he said he has not decided where to attend college.

“I’m not sure about it yet,” he said. “I want to go through 10th, 11th and 12th grade first, like anyone would.”