Ralph Bunche Elementary School (K-5)
Compton Unified, Los Angeles County

• 2006–07 Enrollment: 417
• Percent Free/Reduced-price Meals: 100%
• Percent African American Students: 51%
• Schoolwide Growth API (2007): 846
• African American Growth API (2007): 836

(Note: All data are current as of February 1, 2008.)

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Principal Synee Pearson
Length of time as principal at Bunche Elementary School: 1 year

Former Principal Mikara Solomon Davis
Length of time as principal at Bunche Elementary School: 5 years

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Synee Pearson: "When we do the Friday skills test, the teachers turn in their results weekly. We look at students in bands to see who's moving, who's slipping, what else we need to do. If it's standard-specific, we look to see if there's a teacher who's really doing a good job teaching that standard and what they can share with the rest of the grade level."

Mikara Solomon Davis: "I know it makes people very uncomfortable, but I think the achievement gap is a reflection of our teaching and what's in our hearts. I don't think it's the children. In fact, I know it's not them because look at Bunche."

Q: In your estimation, what are the greatest challenges facing African American students at the elementary school level in general?

A: SP: The greatest challenge is making sure they have their foundational skills and that they come to school ready for learning and academia. And we need to make sure that there is work being done--homework, the extension of school at home--and parent support, of course.

A: MD: Adult expectations of children is the biggest challenge. Somehow along the way because the work is obviously very difficult—there are a lot of challenges—adults stop believing that children can learn.

Q: From your perspective, what are the three most important things your school does to support African American student achievement?

A: SP: Home-school communication. I have an open-door policy with students and parents. We have behavior sheets that go home with the students, and the students know and their parents know that that is the expectation. We prepare homework packets nightly for most of the grade levels here. We are constantly working to make sure that parents understand how important homework really is and how much an extension of the school day it is. It's not an isolated activity. And then we have the Friday skills tests based on the CSTs [California Standards Tests]. When we do the Friday skills test, the teachers turn in their results weekly. We look at students in bands to see who's moving, who's slipping, what else we need to do. If it's standard-specific, we look to see if there's a teacher who's really doing a good job teaching that standard and what they can share with the rest of the grade level, and then who needs help and what type of help we could offer them based on the results of the kids' tests.

A: MD: First, believing that every single child at our school can go to a four-year college. We hold the bar where Ralph Bunche's bar was. He went to UCLA and Harvard. He was the first African American to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. That's our vision--that every single child is going to go to Harvard, regardless of the issues. So I would say that level of high expectations, but visualizing it with concrete things.

For example, every single classroom is named after a college. From the first week of school, everybody studies Ralph Bunche--kindergarten through first grade, Special Education, they write about Bunche. In the first month of school, they do a "goal wall." Every child writes concretely what their goal is for the year and what they want to be in life. If they say stuff like "football player" or "rapper," we push them. We say, "Fine, but what about owning a football team? What about owning a music label?" We don't allow them to just grab onto stereotypical images that they think is all they can attain. A lot of kids are beyond all of that because it's so inherent in the culture. So we figure out what they want to be, and that's posted on the goal wall as well as what college and graduate school they will attend. And of course that's going to change. I mean, they're five in kinder. I knew when I was five years old that I was going to college. It's just what was expected of me. So we wanted to make sure they had that same level of expectations for themselves. The goal wall is up in every single classroom with a picture of the child. Then we have the mission of the school, the vision of the school, posted in English and Spanish in every classroom. When I was principal at the morning assembly, I would say to them: "Where are we going after high school?" And they would all shout, "College." And then, "Where are we going after college?" They all shout, "Graduate school." And with our motto, which is "read, read, read," in Spanish and in English, they'd go to their classroom with some type of inspirational music playing in the background. We also did College Day, where every classroom represents their college. And they do a scavenger hunt for things like tuition, high school credits, things like that. It was fun! It's obviously diluted for the lower grades. Parents would get workshops on saving--the financial side of getting their kids into college. And then every single child every year goes on a field trip to a four-year university. And they wear their college t-shirts. From third grade on up, each kid knows what year they would graduate from college.

Second, we monitored every child in the school every single week from the day they started at Bunche. Every week, we have an assessment of how they're doing based on what they're expected to know at the end of the year. If there are any issues or concerns, we get everybody involved: the teacher, the parent, and, if needed, the resource teacher, the counselor, a doctor, an eye doctor--whatever the child needs. We meet with that group of people and get everybody bought in to make sure that the child can meet the expectations that we have for them for that year. We don't lower our expectations based on anything. Period. So the idea is that every single child, at the very least, can master their grade-level standards. At the very least.

The third piece would be the Student Study Team [SST] if there is any indication that the child is not achieving well. We meet with the parent, child, and anybody else on the outside who needs to come in to help the child, and we develop a plan for that child. In two months, we'll meet again to make sure the child does not slip. And then, of course, there are tons of interventions. But the SSTs help us decide the interventions.

And one more, which makes four. Kindergarten and first grade are seen as very serious work. Starting in kindergarten, the expectation is that they are going to leave reading 35 words in a minute and they are going to know how to add and subtract from 0 to 10. If you trace it all the way back, in kindergarten kids aren't learning these basics, so the gap is already there. They go to first grade, and the gap is even wider. So we don't allow the gap to ever start. Kindergarten and first are considered our most important grades.

Q: What instructional or curricular priorities have been most important?

A: SP: Friday skills test, which mirrors the CSTs and the grade levels of teachers turning in the data to the office so they can compare their classroom to other classrooms to the grade level to see how everyone is performing. And definitely doing the homework and incorporating test-prep practice into the homework and into the daily routine. And holding the students to test-style vocabulary.

A: MD: Reading, writing, and math. Even before we crossed the 800 API threshold, we brought in other pieces. We were like a college-preparatory school. But the first two years, we made English language arts and math priorities and they remained priorities because we were never where we wanted to be completely in math or especially English.

The principal has to be the instructional leader. I was in every classroom every single day. I might not spend quality time in every single classroom, but I know what's happening. We also did eight-step lesson plans for the core areas of instruction every day. Novice teachers had to do it; tenured teachers did not have to do it, but they had to teach in an eight-step format. You could no longer just follow Open Court, your math steps, or whatever other curriculum we were supposed to use. We decided this because curriculum programs are lists of objectives, not a lesson. In year two, we discovered this, I think that was the most brilliant moment that we had. We started using standards as our guide. The standards became our curriculum. We wrote long-term plans for the entire year right at the outset of school and used programs that we had to meet the needs of our long-term plan. In essence, Open Court would be the program that you would use to help you reach that standard. But Open Court (or any other program) no longer became our guide. The standards were our guide. We did that in math, science, and social studies also. There were lots of informal observations, more of a collaboration, ideas about how to get better. Finally, we went on a lot of what we called "excellent-school visits." We would find schools with similar demographics as ours, but that had high APIs…. My teachers would react: "Okay, I see it. It's not rocket science. It really can be done." Nancy Ichinaga, the principal at Bennett-Kew, mentored me my first three years. We would go to her school and see it in action. It really helped the teachers visualize and talk to colleagues. They would exchange e-mails, so a whole professional community developed among various schools. We also found one of the highest-achieving elementary schools in the area—Grande Vista in Palos Verdes. The demographics are not similar, but their API is something like 960. I wanted to see that. We've gone up there three times now. It's so great to see how open everybody is and really excited to share their practices. Based on that Palos Verdes visit, we departmentalized (called team teaching in elementary schools) in our 4th and 5th grades.

Then the Friday assessments were my pulse on how every kid and every teacher was doing. They would turn in their scores with their lesson plans at 8 a.m. every Monday. I would create an Excel sheet, and we would project an AYP [adequate yearly progress score] every week. It was given to teachers by Monday afternoon or Tuesday, and it would guide our professional development conversations on Wednesday each week.

Q: What challenges has your elementary school faced, or does it continue to face, in these efforts?

A: SP: With any population in education, the challenges are just ensuring that the students have support at home, which is very important in elementary school, and that they're learning their basic skills. If they haven't learned them by 3rd grade, then the gaps widen immediately. So it's making sure that the K–2 curriculum is very solid and very structured.

Bunche has experienced success. As we get new students, we need to make sure that the students and their parents are on the same page that we're on in taking learning seriously and seeing school as not just someplace to go because it's required but as truly a place where learning occurs. If there are problems, we sit down and have meetings with the parents and talk to them about where the students are and where we want them to be. If it's a new student, they are assessed in grades 1–5 before coming in. We have a conversation to check fluency and see how many words per minute the student is reading to see if it's at the target, above, or below. We do a comprehension sample and a math sample and then some reading and grammar as well. This tends to get the parents to come on board because we have the actual assessment saying: "This is where our students are at this time of year. This is where your child is performing." We talk about interventions and put some things in place right away. We discuss strategies that the family can use at home. We have Saturday school, but it is not necessarily for the kids who are farthest behind. It's there for the kids within the basic band who we believe are band movers and will make significant growth if they have that extra help and that nudge.

A: MD: If we had focused on the challenges, it wouldn't have happened. There were just too many to talk about. The main thing was expectations--getting people to believe that this really could happen. That's what it came down to. There were tons of pushback--issues with everything like the parents, union, school board, all that. But the push was fast, it was hard, right? And at the end of the day, it made people very uncomfortable to hear things they didn't want to hear, look at things a different way, and get out of this hole, this space of "children can't do this."

Q: What resources, whether inside or outside the school, have been most important?

A: MD: The relationships with the other schools definitely. The "excellent-school" visits were essential. I would also say the parents, teachers, and the outside community. Our security guard got into the scores. Every Monday, we would have a School Support Services Council meeting, which is everybody--plant workers, cafeteria workers, instructional assistants, secretaries—who was not a teacher. The report on the data was shared with them. We talked about their role in supporting every child in reaching these goals of college. And they loved it. They really got into that. So our resources were everybody! The district ended up being a huge ally, though we had lots of bumps. But ultimately the superintendent really believed in us. People came around. In the end, everyone believed in us, and we even got the union to support us as well. It was as much about my learning how to communicate as it was changing perceptions of what our kids can do.

Q: In what way does the demographic mix of your elementary school student population pose challenges or opportunities for supporting African American achievement?

A: MD: The demographics at our school are nice because it's 50/50 brown/black, Latino and African American. I happen to be a biracial person. My mom's Irish American and my dad's African American. And I do speak Spanish. It has afforded me huge opportunities, and I've learned so much about culture. In a situation where there are tensions in the city between the Latino population and the African American population, just by my presence, I am showing that doesn't need to exist. And the teachers we hire believe the same thing. So just having conversations and dialogue between students as it arises, parents as it arises, really explaining that we need to be on the same team. I think for both populations it was a great opportunity to begin a learning process about acceptance and understanding, the opposite of what they might observe socially on the streets. There are real tensions in Compton. The book called Teaching Transgress by bell hooks is what we used to start our school here. We see it as a civil rights movement. And our parents loved it, our teachers loved it, people really got into it because it became a movement versus like one plus one equals two. It was not targeting in a negative way; it was targeting in an empowering way. We really believe that the change that everybody is seeking has to come from within the communities. And that starts in education. If children are educated and they go to college, they can come back and uplift their communities on their own.

Q: What role does data, disaggregated by student subgroup, play in your elementary school's efforts to support student achievement, including among African American students?

A: MD: None. It is a focus on brown and black kids because, you know, I am that. And that was the mission in doing it at Bunche--to uplift your community. That doesn't mean everybody's black and brown, but it's like we view education as the continuation of finding justice in this country. So I don't want to say "none" in that sense. We chose to be here. But we don't sit down and say, "How are our black boys doing?" and "How are our black girls doing?" No. We're obsessed throughout the entire year with every single child getting to advanced, if we could get them there, and getting into college. There's no gap at our school between anybody! I was asked to make a presentation on African American boys and, I didn't know this, but apparently our school has some of the highest-achieving scores for African American boys in math in the country. I didn't know that because we don't do it like that. We're literally trying to get them to Harvard so we don't slow down for any of that.

Q: What support and leadership did your district provide?

A: MD: They sent me an internal coach. I was very young and outspoken because I thought everybody would be excited that they had a principal that believed in kids, right? So she helped me learn how to politically tone it down some. But my immediate supervisor, Lavonne Johnson, was great. She pushed for me to get the job because I never climbed the ranks. I went from classroom to principal, in a way, but I was trained at Columbia University for two years and was a Teach for America Corps member in Compton. Then I went back to New York for two years to get an EdM and came back to Compton as a principal. We were under state receivership at the time and Dr. Randy Ward was the state superintendent. So I had immediate support from him because they knew me as a teacher; he was a huge support for us in the beginning years. I was one of those teachers who was so outraged when I saw my kids didn't have books, I would go to everybody. I would also say that my principal, Faye Sarfan, from when I was a teacher was still there, and she loved me and she's the reason why I stayed in education. She really supported me. I didn't know what I was doing originally, but she saw my passion and would encourage me instead of breaking me down. And that was the model I brought into being a leader. Later, the superintendent, Dr. Jesse Gonzales, was a huge advocate.

A: SP: Our cluster office provides phenomenal leadership. My associate superintendent is very supportive in asking what we need and guiding and facilitating the growth of the school. She and other officers in the district are available to listen to our concerns and our needs and to help in whatever way possible. We have had several bosses and my mentors who have been very supportive.

Q: What would you hope California policymakers, educators, and the public would understand about the academic achievement of the state's African American students?

A: SP: That it's possible! I believe in a lot of instances people count out African American children, or they look at their background or their home life and just set them up for failure. They don't challenge them as much. They don't make their lessons as rigorous maybe as the next population. But if you challenge them, they, like any other student, will rise to the expectation.

A: MD: Everybody has to explore their beliefs about children. I think there is absolutely nothing that a child can't achieve if the community of adults--policymakers, everybody--believes that they can achieve it. I'm from the 70s in Virginia where I saw a lot of adults not believing in people because of the color of their skin. I just would hope that as we see this achievement gap and we start to discuss this again, that we're not going back there. I know it makes people very uncomfortable, but I think the achievement gap is a reflection of our teaching and what's in our hearts. I don't think it's the children. In fact, I know it's not them because look at Bunche. So policymakers should not give anybody an excuse not to teach our children. It needs to be about us as adults--what we are not doing to reach the children.

Q: Is there anything that we've not talked about that is important for us to know about your school or your students?

A: MD: With the leadership changes at the school, I just hope we can sustain what we have started. It is essential that the leaders at the school--from the principal, the teachers, the parents, the entire staff and faculty, the district and the community--do the work that it takes to facilitate the confidence, character, and educational experience that our children deserve and to make the justice that we are all so vigorously seeking in this country a reality.

A: SP: The students and their parents have invested a lot and have worked hard to make Bunche what it is today. They are the ones who deserve so much of the credit because without them, without their buy-in and support, it would not have been possible. I think that, when all gets said and done, they are overlooked. But they are the shining stars.

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This article is a transcript of an interview conducted by EdSource staff in May 2008.
The opinions in this interview are those of the principal, and not necessarily those of EdSource, its staff, its funders, or its Board.