The Compton Unified School District is recognized for its success with students who have shown significant long-term academic improvements outweighing California and the country’s growth.
Recent standardized test score analysis shows that Compton has proven to be an overall poor exception to overall mathematics and read test scores.
In recent years, teachers at Compton Unified have been enthusiastic about how students perform on tests and provide targeted lessons for weak spots. Districts – almost all students come from low-income families – also bring a legion of tutors who walk through classes and provide field help. Training for mathematics and reading teachers has been enhanced.
When compared to other districts with similar demographics, Compton surpassed pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to a project called The Education Recovers Scorecard, a collaboration between researchers from Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth. It is one of a handful of districts that have managed to raise their scores. University.
Researchers at Recovery Scorecard use test scores from a national assessment of educational advancement based on a relatively small sample of fourth and eighth graders, and have a virtually measured state test programme and The correlation of This calculation allowed us to compare 8,719 school districts across 43 states.
Compton’s turnaround, reflected in other analyses, has rewritten a script for the school system that has made headlines with bad news for decades.
A student of Giovannical Camo Tutor in Integrated Mathematics 3 at Compton High School.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Compton students score more than half grade levels in mathematics than in 2019, and are rated as a half grade level in reading.
In contrast, state and national scores show that the average student remains at half the grade level of pre-pandemic achievements in both reading and mathematics. In particular, students are behind 2022, new analysis shows.
“The Poverty and Inequality of Education at Stanford University,” said Sean F. Reardon, professor of education poverty and inequality.
In 2015, Compton students achieved second grade levels above the California average and 2.5th grade levels above the national average. Today, according to Reardon, Compton coincides with the state average in mathematics, standing at about a third of the below-state grade average level for reading.
Compton’s formula for academic gain
Compton’s formula, which includes preparing students for standardized tests, is an approach that is considered controversial in some quarters. Emphasis on test preparation narrows down curriculum and says that in the long run, schools are not attractive and cannot be developed academically and socially, some educators say.
Compton’s manager believes he has found a reasonable balance. Districts justify test-centric strategies because state tests are consistent with what students should be learning. The Compton approach involves frequent diagnostic tests used on schools, schools, schools, or Saturdays to help students familiarize themselves with the language of the test, adjust their education, and to accustom students to single students for additional support. Included.
Compton High School has been open for six years from the former Roosevelt Middle School campus. The new high school campus will open in August.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Compton’s data analysis occurs at all levels. Teachers meet weekly with their colleagues at school. Principals of elementary, junior high and high schools (middle schools, high schools) gather each other every 4-6 weeks to collect supts. Darrin Broley.
Students are included in the analysis, so they can know where they stand.
“When I look at my data, when I look at my data, it disappoints me,” said sixth grade Harmoni Knight, a student at Davis Middle School. “But it makes me realize I can do better in the future and now.”
Compton also relies heavily on the form of personalized instruction that researchers deemed most effective. The district deploys more than 250 tutors in its classes every day across the school system of approximately 17,000 students.
The district also benefited from philanthropy and higher levels of state and federal aid, and appears to have used such resources effectively.
Researchers say Compton received $9,064 per student from federal primary and secondary school emergency relief programs for pandemic recovery.
In comparison, La Unified, the country’s second largest school system, also falls into this high-funding category, receiving nearly $200 more per student than Compton. LA has far surpassed many other large school systems since the pandemic, but has not responded to Compton’s rate of improvement.
Researchers concluded that more money made positive differences across the country, but helped some districts more than others.
Stable leadership
Stable leadership can be a factor for Compton. Brawley joined the school system as superintendent in 2012 after leading the school’s emergency efforts as Associate Superintendent of Adelanto.
“When I first got here,” Broly said. They were all outweighing us. So we literally started benching their performances so that we could perform better. And we have begun to establish smart goals to produce better results. ”
Darryn Broley is the supervisor of the Compton Unified School District.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Annie Veronio, a math instructor at Compton High School, who began teaching at Compton in 2002, said early in her career that training and curriculum guidance was “hits and misses.”
“They do a day of training at the beginning of the year, then give you a curriculum and you’ll be yourself,” she said. However, over the past decade, “We have launched a curriculum council with teachers at different levels. We meet, talk, plan and plan what should be included and how to deliver and evaluate. .”
The district covers areas measured by the state (reading and mathematics test scores), but also includes graduation rates, college preparation, chronic absence rates and suspension rates.
“We wanted Compton unification to be one of the best we could within a district that we could compete with ourselves,” Broly said. “And we did most of it.”
Brawley’s presentation includes a list of statewide school districts with similar poverty rates as well as 93% of Compton students who are eligible for free or low-cost school salaries due to low family income . Within these districts, Compton is a leader in not only improvement rates, but overall academic achievement.
California’s own test data highlights future challenges while backing up Brawley’s claims. In Compton, 41.9% of students read at a skilled level on tests conducted last spring. This is comparable to 39.8% in the LA integration and 44.8% in the state.
In mathematics, Compton’s proficiency was 36.7%, but in LA integration it was 34.6% and in California it was 36.9%.
“We’ve won and celebrated the profits, but at the end of the day, we all know that we can do better,” Broly said.
Brawley said his current goals include 50% math proficiency and 60% reading.
Looking inside the classroom
On a recent Friday, second-year instructor Natalie Robless taught Compton High’s 11th graders about indexes in his integrated math class. And they had multiple strategies to ensure that students were retained.
She carried a card in her student name. She sets a timer for a specific math problem. So, all students knew they were being challenged to pay attention and move quickly. She called the students onto a white board and explained how they solved the math problem.
However, it is hard to know for now whether all 28 students have caught up, despite her moving from table to table to help them.
Eric Foster, a 11th grader, is having problems with Compton High School’s 3 integrated math class.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
In this class she had two tutors moving from one table to the other.
One of them, Joseph Flores, was able to slid towards the student’s table and save the girl with a quirky look on her face. She hesitated about problems that involved manipulation of the index.
“We get the index from the top minus the index from the bottom, right?” Flores, who majored in mathematics at California State LA about a minute after coaching, said the students were ready to finish the problem. I did.
“We’re quickly reinforcing what they’re learning,” Flores said. “We can really be key to all sorts of concerns they may have, what they may have missed.
“We see dramatic improvements in students from the beginning of the semester to the end of the school year.”
This approach is also based on research that emphasizes the importance of students learning concepts when they are first taught. Because it’s difficult to keep up.
Compton High 11th grade Delshanae Williams recalled working with a mathematics tutor every day in middle school. Now she celebrates mathematics.
Her classmate, Floylan Diaz, said it would be difficult to get back on track academically and socially when campuses reopened in the wake of the pandemic.
“The pandemic has affected me in a way that I didn’t understand subjects or mathematics, just like I do now,” he said. “I felt I struggled more during the pandemic because it wasn’t practical.
Associated Press reporters Annie MA, Jocelyn Gecker and Sharon Lurye contributed to the reporting and analysis.
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