Amber Young Medina

KIPP Raíces Academy School in East Los Angeles celebrated its National Blue Ribbon Schools award on Tuesday. After the ceremony, LA School Report caught up with the school’s founding principal, Amber Young Medina, who opened Raíces in 2008 and is now the managing director of KIPP LA Schools. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.

LA School Report: Tell me about your background, where you grew up and how you got into education.

Amber Young Medina: I was born and raised in Los Angeles and I went to college at Amherst in Massachusetts. I grew up in Agoura. I knew my parents had sacrificed a ton for my sister and me to go to private school, but I never knew why. And then when I went to Amherst I took a class where I had to teach in a local high school, and it was the first time I had actually been in a public school, I realized. I was infuriated by what I was seeing, that students of color were making up the mainstream classrooms and Caucasian students were making up the AP classes, and I was outraged. I called up my mom to talk about what I was seeing and experiencing, and she said, ‘Why do you think your father and I sacrificed so much?’ Because my mother is Mexican-American, and based on her educational experiences in Los Angeles, she wanted to pay to have a voice, so that no one would look at my sister and me and not believe anything less than what she was believing. And so I felt that parents absolutely need to believe in the schools in their community and not have to question whether or not the teachers and the staff believe in the families.

At that point I knew I was committed to education, I knew that’s exactly what I was going to be doing in my life, and so when I graduated from Amherst I did Teach For America at Compton Unified and I was part of a change of what was happening there. We had an incredibly dynamic principal that was leading a team and we were making incredible growth at the school and we became Compton’s first California Distinguished School. So I was part of that, and then my principal went on maternity leave, so at the age of 26 I stepped in as the interim principal.

LA School Report: Were you the youngest principal in Compton Unified?

Young Medina: I don’t know the exact statistics. It was meant to be three months and it turned into two years. And so it was an incredible experience. I absolutely loved my time in Compton. And then I found out there was an opportunity to found the first KIPP elementary school in California. And it is funny because when I had been at Compton my friend’s father had sent me a news article about KIPP and wrote a note on it that said, ‘You need to work for KIPP.’ But KIPP was only middle schools at the time.

LA School Report: There were no elementary schools in LA?

Young Medina: Yeah, no elementary schools, and when KIPP was founded there were only a few elementary schools. It was a very new part of KIPP and so when I found out about the opportunity, leaving Compton was a tough decision, but I knew it was the right thing. I really wanted to be a part of KIPP where it is all about the students first. So I applied for the Fisher Fellowship, was awarded the Fisher Fellowship and spent a year planning.

LA School Report: What is the Fisher Fellowship?

Young Medina: The Fisher Fellowship is, you spend a year planning and designing the school. It’s a KIPP national fellowship … you go through selection and then you spend a year in leadership training with them, visiting schools across the country, writing your school design plan, and writing your charter. And then it happened, August 11, 2008, we opened.

LA School Report: I would imagine that time at Compton was like spring training. Because Compton is a district that has challenges but you got to see how a school can do well within that, since it was a California Distinguished School. Tell me more about that time. It must have been crucial for everything going forward.

Young Medina: It absolutely was. So much that I learned there I brought here. And over time, the beautiful thing is when you create a new iteration you can make it better. So people that have taught at Raíces and now they are founders, I see what they take and how they make it their own. Many of the practices that I started in Compton still exist here.

LA School Report: And then when school started here, you were the principal?

Young Medina: I was the founding principal. So I was the principal here for six years. And then Chelsea [Zegarski] took over. She was one of the founding teachers and then assistant principal. So I transitioned to KIPP LA as managing director of schools.

LA School Report: What do you think it is that has made this school special, and above and beyond so many other schools?

Young Medina: I think it starts with our values. It’s a really loving place, but it is also coupled with high expectations and a focus on results. It’s about having an incredible team truly committed to our mission. And working in partnership with our families. It’s truly a family. Like today, one of the most beautiful moments was [parent Mirna Cardenas] saying [about Young Medina], ‘She came into my home and made me feel like I was joining a family.’ And I think that’s incredibly powerful. Those relationships and that partnership we have with our families from the beginning is really a beautiful thing.

LA School Report: Have any KIPP LA schools been a Blue Ribbon winner before?

Young Medina: We are the first.

LA School Report: So what does today feel like for you? On stage you were talking about running booths at farmers markets to recruit kids. What a journey from there to here.

Young Medina: It is. Because when, at that time, I literally roamed throughout the parks, and if I saw a child that looked like they were 4, I would go up to them and say, ‘Are you 4?’ It’s amazing people didn’t call the police on me. But I would essentially approach families, and I was a stranger to them. And I started talking to them about this idea of what we were creating and this promise of what we were going to deliver. And I think promises to families and kids are sacred, and to see that the promise is being upheld and honored is incredibly powerful.

Jessica Moy teaches her second grade class at Kipp Raíces Academy School.

There is something special happening at Kipp Raíces Academy School in East LA, an independent charter school which recently became LA Unified’s only National Blue Ribbon School for 2015.

While 90 percent of the students at KIPP Raíces are from low-income families and 96 percent are Latino and more than half of all students are English learners, the school vastly outperformed district averages in the recent statewide English and math: 74 percent of its students met or exceeded the standards in English language arts, and 79 percent met or exceeded in math, compared with 33 percent in English and 25 percent in math for LA Unified schools.

Further, economically disadvantaged students at the school far outperformed the non-economically disadvantaged students across the district and the state, and the school’s English learners far outpaced the district and state average for fluent English speakers — on the English language arts test.

These performance levels at KIPP Raíces, a K-4th grade elementary school founded in 2008, raise two important policy questions for LA Unified at a time charter schools are poised to become a greater presence within the district: One, to what degree are district officials trying to replicate the successful approach at Raíces and other high-performing charters? And, two, with the Broad Foundation’s plan to expand charter schools in low-income areas at LA Unified, how will they approximate what Raíces is doing?

With those questions in mind, LA School Report visited Raíces for a first-hand look at its approach to education and to ask its leaders how they have attained well-above average success. Here are a few key findings:

High expectations

Principal Chelsea Zegarski, a teacher at Raíces before becoming principal in 2014, said the school’s success begins with setting high expectations. For one, the academic day runs from 7:45 a.m to 4 p.m., longer than in most schools.

“I would say high expectations is a huge focus for us. It’s one of our pillars — KIPP has five pillars,” Zegarski said. “That means high expectations for students as far as their learning and their academics, but also high expectations for ourselves and our staff and what high quality teaching looks like.”

These high exceptions are front and center each time a student enters a classroom, as every doorway is decorated with the specific name, colors and logo of a major college. Every year, students take a field trip to a college campus in Southern California.

“We know that our kids are going to be going out into the world and competing with everybody, with people who went to Harvard-Westlake where those Ivy League schools are more of a household name,” Zegarski said, explaining the big focus on students understanding the college experience at such an early age.

It’s all about the teachers

Zegarski stressed how much focus the school puts on hiring and retaining teachers who can work in a collaborative environment.

“Whenever people ask what is your most effective strategy for this test or what’s your most effective strategy for this particular thing, the answer always is strong hiring practices to get the right people in the door,” Zegarski said.

Second grade teacher Jessica Moy said she feels more as part of a collaborative team at KIPP than she did previously at a private school and a different charter school.

“I do feel more free to teach, but I feel more free in a way that’s also supported by other strong teachers. I’m not doing my own thing and figuring out my own way, but because we colaborate so much we can be sharing the best practices,” Moy said.

A number of studies have shown that charter school teachers are asked, on average, to work longer hours than traditional school teachers do, which has also led to a higher burnout rate. At KIPP, long hours do appear to be the norm.

Moy, who is in her fourth year at the school, said her teacher friends at other schools, often ask, “‘Aren’t you giving up a lot of your free time to invest in all these extra hours of work?’ And I think we are trying to find that balance. I think in the beginning it was a lot more work than free time and space at home, but we are trying to strike that balance.”

Strong relationships with students and families

During the summer, all KIPP Raíces teachers visit the homes of their upcoming students. And KIPP students also spend two full weeks in summer school before academic lessons begin when the entire focus is on classroom procedures, expectations, values and rules.

“Building those relationships those first couple weeks of summer school and establishing those rules and procedures set them up for success for the rest of the year, and we have to spend less instructional time fixing these little behavioral and cultural mishaps during the regular school year,” Moy said.

Lots of extras

With the same level of per-pupil spending, the school has managed to budget for and prioritize things that been problems in traditional schools. Every student receives arts education, every student has a laptop computer and every student is provided an organic meal at lunchtime. When asked how the organic food is afforded, Zegarski shrugged and said, “It’s not that much more expensive, and it has always just been a priority.”

Every student also receives Spanish lessons, even though many of the students speak Spanish in the home. Zegarski said the goal is to create not just bilingual students, but bi-literate ones.

Using freedom wisely

Despite the common perception that charters are free of the “red tape” that slows down traditional schools, Zegarski was quick to say freedom isn’t the sliver bullet solution unless you know how to aim properly.

“The freedom doesn’t necessary always equate to success. It’s not just the freedom, it’s an issue of prioritization and really focusing in what are those decisions that we can make that most impact student learning,” she said.

To what extent can the school’s success be easily replicated? It’s not that simple, Zegarski said.

“A school is such a vibrant organism and there are so many parts that make it work on a daily basis,” she said.

Zegarski also said that more important than the freedom to choose its particular approach is the process a dedicated staff and faculty goes through developing it.

“I don’t think it’s, ‘Lets find the golden curriculum and then share it widely,'” she said. “I think really the process of creating curriculum and planning and digging and unpacking the standards in those conversations that come with it with the teacher who is doing the planning, those are the intangibles.”

Click here to sign up for the LA School Report newsletter, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Kipp is one of 33 schools from California to receive the honor, which recognizes both public and private elementary, middle, and high schools in which “students either achieve very high learning standards or are making notable improvements in closing the achievement gap.” It is also the only charter among the California schools honored.

The KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) network operates 13 LA Unified independent charter schools in South and East Los Angeles. The Raíces Academy is an elementary school that was founded in 2008, with a student population that is 96 percent Latino and 90 percent of students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch, according to its website.

“This honor recognizes your students’ accomplishments and the hard work and dedication that went into their success,” Duncan said in a video message to the awardees. “Your journey has taught you collaboration, intentional instruction, and strong relationships in school and with your community. You represent excellence—in vision, in implementation, and in results—and we want to learn as much as we can from you.”

One the recent Smarter Balanced standardized test, KIPP Raíces had 74 percent of its students meet or exceed the standards in English language arts and 79 percent meet or exceed the math standards, far outpacing the state and district averages.