Schools in Compton Set Reform Pace

This is Pablo’s second time in the third grade.

But he is not exactly repeating it. The 9-year-old is not surrounded by kids a year younger. Nor is he sitting through the same lessons that stumped him last year.

Pablo spends at least four hours of every school day immersed in basic reading, writing and speaking activities: phonics drills, journal-keeping, spelling and vocabulary work. He devotes most of what’s left of his six-hour day to mathematics.

He and his classmates at George Washington Elementary School are all in the same boat--they scored at least one grade level behind on standardized tests last spring, and they were kept back. As “retainees,” they became participants in the embattled Compton Unified School District’s pioneering program to stop social promotions--the widespread but increasingly disparaged practice of moving students to the next grade, whether or not they are ready.

As Los Angeles and other public school districts throughout the state grapple with the impending end of social promotions, they might find some lessons in Compton.

Its program, initiated last year, met searing resistance from parents whose children were held back. Some led a protest in July and then sued in September. But district officials, now halfway through the program’s first school year, believe they are on to something.

“These children are very positive, very motivated,” Washington Principal Rosa Bello said of the campus’ two classes of youngsters kept behind in third grade.

“They are serious about wanting to move on, and they know they have to earn it,” Bello said. The students have dramatically improved their behavior and attendance, she said, in addition to showing signs that they are gaining academically.

The district may seem an unlikely candidate for leadership in education reform. Compton was taken over by the state in 1993 because of its academic and fiscal failures. Barely one of 10 students is performing at grade level, said Randolph E. Ward, the latest state administrator charged with getting the district back on its feet.

Results of the Stanford 9 test administered last spring showed Compton students performing well below national norms. Its second-graders scored in the 22nd percentile in reading and the 30th in math. Its 11th-graders scored in the 13th percentile in reading and the 19th in math.

The district’s dismal performance, however, has sparked change.

“It challenged us to look at our procedures and practices,” said Assistant Supt. LaVonne Johnson.

The district’s retention policy was spawned when special state funding enabled it to offer a mandatory, eight-week summer program--dubbed the Extended School Year--for struggling students. The emphasis was on language arts and math. It showed such promise that officials decided to find ways to have a similar program during the regular school year.

The result was the Accelerated Learning Program, the district’s alternative to both social promotions and the widely criticized practice of having students simply repeat a grade if they fall too far behind.

“It doesn’t work to just give them more of the same, if all they are doing is just repeating the grade,” said JaMaiia Bond, who heads the Accelerated Learning Program.

In fall 1997, the district began telling parents that students who fared poorly on standardized tests and other evaluations administered throughout the school year would be required to attend summer school. If at the end of the session they remained a year or more behind their grade level, the students would be held back in September.

Last June, about 1,200 students faced retention. At the end of the summer session, almost 900 stayed behind.

Lacking the money to provide special daylong classes for all of its poorly performing students, school officials picked three key grades--third, fifth and eighth--to launch the program.

Students held back in these grades attend the special, somewhat smaller classes. They have a full-time instructional aide and a specially picked teacher who earns an extra month’s salary for additional hours on the job--spent in tutoring, meeting with parents and honing teaching skills. There are 48 such classes throughout the district.

The program’s fifth-graders are allowed to move to middle school with their peers and can join their former classmates for physical education and lunchtime. They are not allowed to participate in any activities, including school sports, that would take time away from their lessons.

Teachers in the special program cannot teach other subjects at the expense of reading and math. Art, science and history, for example, can be taught only if teachers weave them into the reading program.

“The literacy has to come first--nothing is as important as that,” Johnson said.

Students held back in other grades get some additional help as well, including tutoring, Saturday sessions and summer school, Johnson said.

All the students will be tested early this month and again toward the end of the school year. Those who have caught up will be promoted.

Johnson said the district is still wrestling with some aspects of the program, among them finding ways to include youngsters who do not yet know much English and who may need extra help in reading. About 62% of the district’s 29,000 students are not fluent in English.

By using bilingual aides in the classrooms, some of these remedial students can still be accommodated in the Accelerated Learning Program, where instruction is entirely in English.

Despite the advance notice about the retention program, many parents reacted angrily when they learned their child would be kept back.

Principal Bello recalled one woman with two daughters being retained. “She stormed into the school and demanded to know, ‘Who’s over here failing all these children?’ ” she said.

Most parents have come around, Bello said. “They see this as a chance for their child to succeed. . . . They know that children eventually will have to go out in the world and compete, and it is our responsibility to see that they can.”

One parent said she is happy that her daughter Socorro, 9, stayed behind in third grade, but she is frustrated that she doesn’t work harder.

“She doesn’t want to try,” the parent said.

Socorro’s teacher, Rhogerthia Campbell, said she “has really come a long way” since September.

Campbell said she had her doubts when she first heard about the program.

“I thought about all those retainees in one class, but I worked in the [summer school program] and I changed my mind. I feel this is a program that should have been done sooner.”

Most of her 17 students seem to agree.

DeAndre, 9, said he is learning more and gets “more attention” than he did last year.

“I wanted to go to fourth grade,” admitted Yadira, 10. “But now I like doing my homework and my work in class.”

Same with Jorge.

“I was mad,” he said, “but I feel better now.”