GALVESTON — Fresh from the Philippines, Rhante Lubrico knew nothing about the state’s science curriculum, the foundation for the hardest part of the state’s high-stakes standardized exam.

His low-income fifth-graders knew almost nothing about science.

The newly formed island charter school that recruited him, Ambassadors Preparatory Academy, didn’t have any science labs or microscopes. Lubrico had class in a trailer.

What could’ve been a disaster turned out to be a match made in heaven.

Nine months after Lubrico discovered that only four of his students knew anything at all about science, Lubrico got the results back from the science TAKS exam — 93 percent of his students passed.

Scores on the TAKS science exam traditionally have been so low that the state considers a school acceptable if 40 percent of students pass. Statewide, 81 percent of fifth-graders passed the science exam, according to preliminary results from the state.

Out of Lubrico’s class of 15 students, 14 passed the exam. The only child who didn’t pass qualified for special education.

Thirteen students answered every question correctly. One student missed one question.

The school’s superintendent, Pat Williams, said the results are special because of the demographics at Ambassadors Preparatory Academy, where 95 percent of students are low-income and African-American, two populations that historically have struggled on the TAKS test.

She said the results are even more special considering that Lubrico started the year teaching his fifth-grade students on a third-grade level.

In what is commonly called a “bench mark test,” Lubrico tested his students at the beginning of the year to gauge how they would fare on the TAKS exam. Only two passed.

Lubrico spent the year teaching three grade levels of science.

The results for the charter school, only a year old, will not count toward the school’s rating. Per state policy, the school will remain unrated until it completes its second year.

That’s good, in Williams’ view, because she is striving for an exemplary rating. Based on the school’s results this year — 93 percent passed science, 72 percent passed reading, 58 percent passed math and 83 percent passed writing — the charter school would have been rated acceptable.

When Williams looks at the results, she sees failure. She said it is not acceptable to expect that a certain number of students will fail.

“I’m not satisfied until 100 percent of the students pass,” she said, “These are just state standards that we should be well above. I’m not bragging about this because I want 100 percent passing.”

While most public school districts have preliminary results, official results won’t be available until the end of summer.

The key to success is good teachers, and Lubrico is her most exceptional teacher, Williams said.

She found Lubrico, 37, through an online recruiting Web site. He was frustrated with the education system in the Philippines, where he worked for 14 years as a public school science teacher.

He thought that the government did not provide teachers with the resources they needed and did not pay attention to their needs.

He agreed to come to Galveston.

For the first two weeks, students thought Lubrico was mean, Williams said. They called him “Mr. Homework.”

But as time went by, they warmed to him.

The dreaded homework was partly the key to his success. He gave the students homework they were sure to understand because it was a review of what they learned that day in the classroom, and that gave them confidence.

Lacking a big budget, Lubrico drew all of his own science posters and other visuals. Because he didn’t have science labs, Lubrico packed his students in a van and took them to the University of Texas Medical Branch, where they used microscopes.

He studied the state’s science curriculum, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, and taught every concept to his students. Then he went beyond the curriculum. He developed his own test-taking strategy he calls RUUNER — an acronym for read, understand, underline context clues, eliminate choices and review.

He convinced his students that science is the easiest exam of all — all they had to do was understand the concepts and facts, he said.

By the time the test arrived, Lubrico’s students were ready.

“‘This is easy,’” Lubrico recalls his students telling him.

One student not only answered all the questions, she explained in the empty space next to the questions why she chose the answer. Another student wrote a note to the people who would grade the exam: “Dear TAKS people, this is so easy for us,” Lubrico said.

By the time school was over, Lubrico had given the students not only a solid understanding of science, but also confidence they didn’t have before, Williams said.

“He made them believe in themselves,” Williams said. “He made them believe they could do it.”