Oxford Academy Aims Its Students High

At this public school, everyone aims for college. The kids all don “academic attire,” even self-conscious teens. The admission price is a top score on a standardized test. The ticket out is one too many C’s.

Many parents brave the morning freeway gantlet to ferry their children to campus. They sign contracts promising to limit TV time and participate in school activities. Students vow not to grouse about a ton of homework each night.

This is the Oxford Academy, a new college-preparatory public school that teaches grades 7 through 12 in one of Orange County’s most diverse and urban school districts.

It’s too soon to tell if the Cypress school will succeed in sending all its graduates on to college. But the school, in its first year, already is a success in the arena of public opinion: Over two recent Saturdays, a total of 450 sixth-graders have queued up to take a standardized test for the right to attend Oxford this fall. Only 200 will be admitted.

“It wasn’t as hard as I thought,” said Erica Quinn, 11, after finishing the three-hour exam earlier this month.

“I was nervous,” the Cypress girl said. “But then once I saw the test, my nervousness almost all ran away.”

Erica said she thinks Oxford will be more stimulating than other local schools because the students are motivated to do well. “I don’t want to be stuck anymore in a class where the teacher has to explain things over and over again,” she said.

The 32,000-student Anaheim Union High School District, to which Oxford belongs, copes with its share of educational woes.

Half the students speak a language other than English at home. Poverty allows almost half the pupils to eat school lunch for free or at a discount. SAT scores hover below the national and county averages. And three of every four Anaheim-area graduates lack the courses necessary to get into prestigious University of California schools.

School officials might be forgiven if they used tough demographics to justify lowering the academic bar. Instead, Oxford Academy raised it.

“I know there are some kids who are just not going to go to college--but it won’t be because of us,” said school board President Harald G. Martin. “We’re making sure that the educational atmosphere and the necessary resources are available to help a student who wants to go to college get there. I don’t ever want to sell anybody short--regardless of what his background is.”

Even though he’s only in eighth grade, Essam Ulhaq knows he’s headed to college. Absolutely. No doubt. Slight in a navy school-logo sweatshirt, the 14-year-old speaks more like a high school sophomore.

His course work is similarly accelerated.

Essam is already a whiz at simplifying radicals. Typically, algebra is reserved for ninth grade, but new state standards--and Oxford policy--tackle it a year earlier. To help struggling students, teachers are available for an hour after school and by appointment on weekends.

“I came to Oxford because they have high standards; they’ve raised the GPA,” Essam said between two back-to-back algebra quizzes. “My old school was so easy, we never got homework. This is really competitive. It’s challenging.”

Make that challenging and occasionally great fun.

English teacher Diane Erickson was voted one of the school’s two toughest teachers. In a recent lesson about William Shakespeare, Erickson divided her class into three groups: Front and center, the players. Stage right, the royals. Below it all sat the groundlings.

While the players acted out a skit about the Bard’s contributions to modern language, the upper-crust types watched, aloof. When a player flubbed a line, the rowdy groundlings gleefully lobbed wads of paper at the stage (paper being easier to clean up than the authentic article, spoiled vegetables).

“May I throw something?” a student-turned-prince asked.

“Oh, no,” the teacher responded, aghast. “Royalty never threw anything.”

“Then can I behead someone?”

Built in 1960, Oxford’s campus operated as a junior high for two decades until enrollment dipped. Anaheim school administrators shuttered the campus in 1980 and leased it to other tenants, most recently a private Christian school. Last fall, school administrators reopened the site on Orange Avenue as Oxford Academy to alleviate overcrowding districtwide.

After bandying around the idea of making Oxford a magnet for the arts or liberal arts, Anaheim trustees settled on a high-standards magnet school open to any students in the district able to do the work. The school has 400 students in the seventh and eighth grades now. Each fall, another grade will be added until the school is full at 1,000 pupils in the 2002-03 school year.

Oxford’s curriculum is designed to meet UC requirements--leaving students few class choices until junior and senior years. Electives will be geared toward the health sciences and international business, the school’s twin focuses. Advanced Placement offerings will be plentiful, as will chances to take classes at nearby Cypress College, said Principal Thomas Peters.

“A typical Oxford student is what I call focused,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of our kids will go on to four-year or community colleges. Their parents want a traditional setting. About 15% are students who have returned to public school from private school.”

To keep the focus firmly on academics, all students must wear “academic attire,” a modified school uniform of closed-toe shoes; khaki or navy pants, skirts and shorts; and shirts with the school name stitched on them. No denim or revealing garb is permitted.

Oxford is better than private school, gushed parent Dottie Garbisch, whose 13-year-old daughter attended Christian schools until this year.

“At private school, they always tell you how much they love the kids, but not one of them ever offered to tutor for free,” she said.

When her daughter, Jamie, fell behind in math for a spell, her teacher rebuffed Garbisch’s offer to hire an outside tutor. Instead, he helped the eighth-grader gratis before school. “I was floored,” Garbisch recalled.

While Oxford parents and teachers brim with pride about their school, discontent simmers among some other Anaheim teachers.

They worry that Oxford is skimming the cream of the district’s student population, which might one day make a very real difference to schools as the governor will use school test scores to rank California’s campuses. Those that don’t fare well could be punished financially.

“The fear is that students at other schools could be penalized,” said teachers union President George Triplett. “This is no fault of Oxford’s. But the new legislation rewards schools with students who are able to take tests well.”

Oxford math department chairman Charlie Bialowas doesn’t deny it.

He sees competition for students as healthy, influencing other schools to consider starting more rigorous academic programs to keep pace.

“Are we taking the top kids from other schools? Yes, without a doubt,” Bialowas said. “But we aren’t taking them all. The teachers here aren’t selfish, we’re sharing what we learn. But if I were at another school, sure, I’d be jealous.”

Another difficulty for the new academy is attrition: About 10% of pupils will be forced to transfer at year’s end because they cannot maintain the required GPA, which starts out at B-minus and goes up from there. Another tenth of eighth-graders may not return next year because Oxford won’t field all the traditional sports teams. The principal said Oxford will have enough students for basketball and tennis, but not football and marching band.

“If I lose sleep over anything, it’s those kids who are not able to stay here for academic reasons,” Peters said. “That bothers me personally.”

Honors society President Erin Sorenson is a little bothered that she’ll never get to cheer for an Oxford Patriots football team. She says some of her friends will leave Oxford to play that sport.

But the trade-off is well worth it.

“I decided to come here for a better opportunity to get a good education and go to college,” said Erin, 14. “By the time I go to college, I know I’ll be prepared.”

Staff writer Allison Cohen contributed to this report.

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Setting Sights on College

The college-preparatory Oxford Academy, a public magnet school serving grades 7-12, aims for all graduates to meet University of California requirements. Students take six years of science, math, foreign language and English. All students take honors classes; older students may take Advanced Placement classes. Here’s a sample course of study through ninth grade:

Grade 7

Beginning algebra/geometry

Enrichment science

English

World history

Computers/elective

Gym

World language

*

Grade 8

Algebra

Science

English

U.S. history

Computers/elective

Gym

World language

*

Grade 9

Geometry

Biology

English

Computers/college/careers

Health/elective

Gym

World language

Grade Pressure

The Anaheim Union High School District has set strict grade-point average standards for Oxford. Students who do not meet the requirement two semesters in a row will be forced to transfer to another school. So far, average GPA exceeds expectations. The first-semester average was 3.04. GPA standards, to take effect this fall:

Grade: GPA

7 and 8: 2.5

9: 2.75

10-12: 3.0

Source: Oxford Academy; Researched by KATE FOLMAR/Los Angeles Times