Compton Unified stands out as a national leader in raising student test scores
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The Compton Unified School District is winning recognition for its success with students, who are showing significant, long-term academic improvement that is outpacing growth in California and the nation.
An analysis of recent standardized test score shows Compton has proven to be a standout exception to overall poor math and reading test scores — even though its overall student proficiency rates have much room to grow.
In recent years, Compton Unified teachers have intently studied how students are performing on tests and targeted lessons to weak spots. The district — where nearly all students come from low-income families — also brings in corps of tutors who walk the class and offer on-the-spot help. And teacher training in math and reading has been bolstered.
When compared to other districts with similar demographics, Compton is among a handful of districts that have succeeded in raising scores beyond pre-pandemic levels of 2019, according to a project called the Education Recovery Scorecard — a collaboration between researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth universities.
Recovery Scorecard researchers used test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is based on a relatively small sample of fourth- and eighth-graders, and determined a correlation to state testing programs that measured virtually all third- through eighth-grade students. This calculation allowed for a comparison of 8,719 school districts across 43 states.
Scores nationwide and in California have yet to rebound from pandemic-era declines. Some outcomes continue to get worse. Low math and English scores, California and L.A. included, mark the nation’s report card.
The Compton turnaround — which also is reflected in other analyses — has rewritten the script for a school system that for decades made headlines with bad news: a district bankruptcy, a state takeover, corruption allegations, cheating scandals and perpetually low student achievement.
Students in Compton are scoring more than half a grade level better in math than in 2019 and approaching half a grade level better in reading.
In contrast, state and national scores show the average student remains half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement in both reading and math. In reading, especially, students are even further behind than they were in 2022, the new analysis shows.
“Test scores in Compton were increasing rapidly before the pandemic, and have continued increasing,” said Sean F. Reardon, professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University.
In 2015, Compton students scored two grade levels below the California average and 2.5 grade levels below the national average. Today, Reardon said, Compton has matched the state average in math and stands about one-third of a grade level below the state average in reading: “That’s a remarkable and sustained pattern of improvement over the last decade.”
Compton’s formula for academic gains
Compton’s formula, which includes prepping students for standardized testing, is an approach considered controversial in some quarters. An over-emphasis on test-prep can narrow the curriculum and make school less engaging and less academically and socially nurturing in the long run, some educators say.
Compton administrators think they’ve found a reasonable balance. The district justifies a test-centered strategy on the grounds that the state testing is aligned with what students are supposed to be learning. The Compton approach includes frequent diagnostic tests that are used to get students accustomed to the language of testing and also to adjust teaching and to single out students for extra help — in school, after school or on Saturdays.
The data analysis in Compton happens at all levels. Teachers meet weekly with their colleagues within their schools. Principals at each academic level — elementary, middle and high school — gather every four to six weeks with each other and Supt. Darin Brawley.
Students are included in the analysis so they know where they stand.
“Looking at my data, it kind of disappoints me” when the numbers are low, said sixth-grader Harmoni Knight, a student at Davis Middle School. “But it makes me realize I can do better in the future, and also now.”
Compton also has relied heavily on a form of tutoring that researchers have deemed most effective — immediate in-person, in-class help. The district deploys more than 250 tutors daily to classes across the school system of about 17,000 students.
The district has benefited, too, from philanthropy and higher levels of state and federal aid — and appears to have used such resources effectively.
Compton received $9,064 per student from the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program for pandemic recovery — one of the highest amounts in California, according to the researchers.
By comparison, L.A. Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, also fell into this high funding category, receiving nearly $200 more per student than Compton. L.A. has fared much better since the pandemic than a number of other large school systems, but it has not kept pace with the rate of improvement in Compton.
The researchers concluded that, across the nation, more money made a positive difference, but that it helped some school districts more than others.
Stable leadership
Stable leadership also could be a factor for Compton: Brawley joined the school system as superintendent in 2012 after leading school-turnaround efforts as a deputy superintendent in Adelanto.
“When I first got here,” Brawley said, “every surrounding district was kicking our tail, whether it was Lynwood, Paramount, L.A. Unified, Bellflower — you name it. They were all outperforming us. So we began literally bench-marking their performance so that our performance would become better. And we started establishing smart goals to produce better results.”
Compton high school math instructor Annie Belonio, who started teaching in Compton in 2002, said that early in her career the training and curriculum guidance was “hit and miss.”
“They would give one day of training at the start of the year and then give you the curriculum and you’re on your own,” she said. But for the last decade or more, “we started having curriculum councils with teachers of different levels. We meet, talk, plan out things that should be included and how to deliver and how to assess.”
The district targets areas that the state measures — reading and math test scores — but also graduation rates, college preparation, chronic absenteeism and suspension rates.
“We wanted Compton Unified to become one of the best districts that we could within the districts that we benchmark ourselves against,” Brawley said. “And we’ve pretty much done that.”
Brawley’s presentation includes a list of school districts across the state with a poverty rate similar to the 93% of Compton students who qualify for a free or reduced-price school lunch because of low family income. Among those districts, Compton is a leader in overall academic achievement, not just rate of improvement.
California’s own test data back up Brawley’s claims, while also making clear that challenges that lie ahead. In Compton, for grades three through eight, 41.9% of students were reading at a proficient level in tests administered last spring. This compares to 39.8% in L.A. Unified and 44.8% for the state.
In math, Compton’s proficiency rate was 36.7%, compared to 34.6% for L.A. Unified and 36.9% for California.
“Even though we gained, and we celebrate the gains, at the end of the day we all know that we can do better,” Brawley said.
Brawley said his current goals include a 50% proficiency rate for math and 60% for reading.
A peek inside the classroom
On a recent Friday, second-year instructor Nathalie Robles was teaching Compton High 11th-graders about exponents in her integrated math class — and had multiple strategies to make sure students were keeping up.
She carried cards with student names — so that she would call on everyone. She set a timer for certain math problems — so all students knew they were being challenged to pay attention and move quickly. She called students up to a white board to explain how they solved math problems.
But it’s hard to know in the moment whether all 28 students are keeping up, even though she moved from table to table to help them.
For this class, she had two tutors also moving from table to table.
One of them, Joseph Flores, glided toward a student table to help a girl with a quizzical expression. She was hesitating over a problem involving the manipulation of exponents.
“We take the exponent from the top minus the exponent from the bottom, right?” explained Flores, who majored in math at Cal State L.A. After about a minute of coaching, the student was ready to finish the problem.
“We’re immediately reinforcing what they’re learning,” Flores said. “We are able to really key in on any type of concerns that they might have, anything that they might have missed, really just making sure that they get all their questions answered there and then before they forget.”
“I see a drastic improvement in the students from the beginning of the semester to the end of the school year.”
This approach also builds on research stressing the importance of having students learn a concept when it’s first taught to them — because it’s harder to catch up.
Delshanae Williams, a Compton High 11th-grader, recalled that in middle school she had worked with math tutors every day. Now she’s in honors math.
Her classmate Froylan Diaz said it was hard to get back on track — academically and socially — when campuses reopened in the wake of the pandemic.
“The pandemic affected me in the way where I didn’t understand the subject or the math as much as I do now, in person,” he said. “I felt that I struggled more during the pandemic because it wasn’t hands on... working out the problems in person.”
Associated Press reporters Annie Ma, Jocelyn Gecker and Sharon Lurye contributed reporting and analysis.
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