The other half are African-American. Only a handful are white. The school is about six miles from the Los Angeles airport. Parts of the working-class neighborhood aren't safe at night. Four out of five qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Many educators say test scores are more a reflection of family income than of teaching quality.
Yet by second grade, Bennett-Kew students can write compositions on how they spent their summer vacation with very few spelling or grammatical errors. In an essay posted on the classroom wall, Erick Jimenez, a second-grader, boasts of reading 10 books while in Mexico over the summer. Asked what he likes about school, first-grader Ernesto Aguilar has a ready answer. Ichinaga, who is almost 70, doesn't speak Spanish but knows the challenge her Spanish-speaking students face. As a youngster in Hawaii, she grew up speaking Japanese.