Principal's Corner

DVHS First Ever—National Merit Semifinalists

Three DVHS seniors have been named semifinalists in the 55^th annual National Merit Scholarship competition. Dougherty’s three National Merit semifinalists are: Joey Aiello, Sabareesh Babu and Anna Liu.  They were among 166,763 students from 1,757 high schools around California who took the PSAT/NMSQT exam last fall in an attempt to qualify for National Merit status. The PSAT scoring range is 240 (highest) to 60 (lowest), with a 218 or better required to qualify for National Merit semifinalist honors. In California, 2,070 students earned semifinalist status. Nationwide, about 16,000 high school seniors are semifinalists.  Semifinalists will continue in the competition for 8,200 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $36 million. The scholarship finalists will be announced next February. The next step for semifinalists is to earn finalist status; approximately 90% will become finalists.  About half of National Merit finalists receive scholarships. 

 Congratulations to our eight commended students in the National Merit Program.  Arjun Aletty, Derek Dai, Varsha Jayaraman, Carrie Jiang, Juna Song, Sonia Vora, Renee Yun and Katherine Zhang.  Commended students placed among the top five percent of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2010 competition by taking the 2008 Preliminary SAT/NMSQT.  These students will not continue in the competition for the National Merit Scholarships.

College Board Advanced Placement (AP) Scores

The Advanced Placement program offers students the opportunity to take college-level courses in high school and the chance to receive college credit for their work based on their performance on the year-end AP exams.  The exams are scored on a five-point scale.  The AP Scholar honors are given to those students who scored above a 3 on multiple exams.  The College Board awards several levels of achievement, based on student performance.  Congratulations to the following students for their achievements on the AP Exams taken:                             

AP Scholar with Distinction: (scored at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken, and 3 or higher on at least five exams)

Joseph Aiello, Carrie Jiang, Sebastian Silva, Juna Song, Sonia Vora, and Katherine Zhang

AP Scholar with Honor: (scored at least 3.25 on all AP exams taken, and 3 or higher on at least four exams)

Parth Kapadia, Rashi Ojha and Enze Zhao 

AP Scholar: (scored 3 or higher on three or more AP exams)

Roy Miguel Asi, Elaine Chong, Derek Dai, Sasha Jasty, Nayoun Kim, David Ku, Spencer Lee, Yanjun Liu, Michael Mullen, Emily Nguyen, Stephanie Nishi, Nikhil Rao, Caroline Shen, Ryan Shu, Kenneth Wang, Kyle Wu, Renee Yun, Connie Zhang         

Last year Dougherty Valley High School students in grades 10-11 took a total of 309 AP exams. Currently, we offer 15 AP courses in addition to 6 honors-level courses.  Honors and AP classes are weighted courses.  Next year, we plan to add additional AP courses in computer science, Psychology, and other areas.  For subject level passing rates, please visit our website at http://www.dvhigh.net/counseling/AP%20Passing%20Percentages%20Scores%20by%20Subject.pdf.

Speech and Debate

Our Speech and Debate team did well “Congress 1” at Washington High School.  Congratulations to the Junior Varsity team members:  Rabeea Abbas (4^th), Sasank Aramandla (5^th), Siddarth Aramandla (5^th), RaNelle Bradley ( 2^nd), Anthony Chan (5^th), Andrew Chen, Patrick Chen (1^st),  Ananth Cherukupally (1^st), Nathan Chin (4^th), Arjun Chirumamilla, Victoria Ho (3^rd), Diane Lee (2^nd), Louie Lin 2^nd), Patrick Liu (4^th), Davy Lu (1^st), Derek Mau (2^nd), Ryan Perera (4^th), Rashi Ojha, Austin Yun and Andrew Zhao ( 3^rd) and Varsity team members Jega Vigneshwaran (2^nd place Presiding Officer), Uzair Khan (3^rd PO), J.R. Abueg, Sai Avala and Shree Patel. 

Senior Picnic

105 out of 230 senior students participated in the first senior event held on October 1, sponsored by the Senior Class officers.  The senior picnic was held at Little Hills Ranch in San Ramon.   The event was a success and our students were commended for their behavior by the park officials.  The students that attended the picnic were excused from school and counted toward our attendance funding since it was a school-sponsored event.  Unfortunately, 58 senior students were reported ill that day.  We did not expect all senior students to attend this activity but if they were not attending the event we expected the students to attend school.  Staff will have to decide if we are going to sponsor a spring senior event in light of the recent participation and attendance concerns.

API Score

Congratulations to our students, staff and parents!  DVHS scored an impressive 905 on our 2009 API.  This ranks DVHS 23^rd among all high schools in the state of California.  Our results indicated growth in many subject levels and within our designated subgroups.  During Back to School Night, I presented slides of our students’ results based on scores of Proficient and Advanced.  Under the “No Child Left Behind Act”, by 2014, all of our students and sub-groups of students must score Proficient and Advanced on every test administered.   We appreciate your students’ dedication to their education and willingness to take this test seriously.  Below is the statistical data pulled from the California Department of Education’s website.

 California Department of Education-http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2009

DVHS Population Changes from the 2007-to present