Time has run out for the LAUSD.
Thirty years of failure, of failed reform, of bloated bureaucracy, of waste is enough.
Today's report by the California Charter School Association ought to end any talk of piecemeal reform and empty rhetoric. This ought to be the end of the LAUSD.
The district's only achievement after an endless stream of superintendents and phony reform efforts is that test scores for elementary school students have risen slightly year over year. But the improvement ends there. Middle and Senior High performance still lags terribly, the dropout rate is appalling.
Yvonne Chan, head of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in San Fernando, demonstrated years ago that fully involving parents, liberating teachers and strong leadership produced great results that became more dramatic over time. That's because students, teachers, parents and the community outside the school have an ownership stake that generates success.
Now the Charter School Association report comparing similar LAUSD schools and charter schools statistically proves the point beyond a shadow of a doubt.
It's not just the brilliance of Yvonne Chan that is making a difference. Its charter schools as a whole. These are schools that live and die on their success and their perceived success and the achievement gap between charters and LAUSD grows as they mature and as students advance to Middle and High Schools.
LAUSD schools go on and on despite their failure. LAUSD bureaucrats go on and on despite their failure. LAUSD teachers go on and on through the dance of the lemons from one school to another.
LAUSD cannot be saved. It needs to be dismantled iinto charter school clusters that give hope to students and parents, that bring in the full energy of the community, that hold teachers and administrators accountable.
The mayor's much-touted reform plan amounts to next to nothing. Inserting Ray Cortines in charge of the district's operations will not solve the problem. Cortines already had one chance to do the job. It's too big, too hopeless.
The current state budget crisis that means sharp cuts in school funding is the right time to bring together the community to break up the district. We've waited long enough for results. Now is the time for bold action.
gives hope and energy
Thirty years of failure, of failed reform, of bloated bureaucracy, of waste is enough.
Today's report by the California Charter School Association ought to end any talk of piecemeal reform and empty rhetoric. This ought to be the end of the LAUSD.
The district's only achievement after an endless stream of superintendents and phony reform efforts is that test scores for elementary school students have risen slightly year over year. But the improvement ends there. Middle and Senior High performance still lags terribly, the dropout rate is appalling.
Yvonne Chan, head of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in San Fernando, demonstrated years ago that fully involving parents, liberating teachers and strong leadership produced great results that became more dramatic over time. That's because students, teachers, parents and the community outside the school have an ownership stake that generates success.
Now the Charter School Association report comparing similar LAUSD schools and charter schools statistically proves the point beyond a shadow of a doubt.
It's not just the brilliance of Yvonne Chan that is making a difference. Its charter schools as a whole. These are schools that live and die on their success and their perceived success and the achievement gap between charters and LAUSD grows as they mature and as students advance to Middle and High Schools.
LAUSD schools go on and on despite their failure. LAUSD bureaucrats go on and on despite their failure. LAUSD teachers go on and on through the dance of the lemons from one school to another.
LAUSD cannot be saved. It needs to be dismantled iinto charter school clusters that give hope to students and parents, that bring in the full energy of the community, that hold teachers and administrators accountable.
The mayor's much-touted reform plan amounts to next to nothing. Inserting Ray Cortines in charge of the district's operations will not solve the problem. Cortines already had one chance to do the job. It's too big, too hopeless.
The current state budget crisis that means sharp cuts in school funding is the right time to bring together the community to break up the district. We've waited long enough for results. Now is the time for bold action.
gives hope and energy
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the Naitonal Enquirer.
Would somebody smarter than me explain how complicated it would be to force a breakup of the district? Politically, I know labor would fight like hell to keep the status quo and its bought-and-paid-for school board, but if secession could make it to the ballot, why not real neighborhood schools where are kids could get a quality education?
I do not understand why public employees must be unionized. Why are the leaders of the union more capable than the parents and teachers in running the schools? Politicians passed the laws that made unions possible. The political courts confirmed the laws that made unions possible and now the whole city is run by the bureaucratic unions instead of the voters. Naturally they will fight to keep that power.
It is their success story. But what a story!!
The city can be proud of having the largest most ignorant mass of people who know nothing but fear and frustration.
The unions must be ruled illegal and unnecessary.
Then we shall be able to have smaller, and smarter school districts. And not just the schools, the unionization of every department in the city must be ruled illegal. We have an immense city ruled by mafia -like individuals.
We need an LA TEA PARTY if we are to have any kind of law at all. Let us get going. July 14th, Bastille Day!!!! See you there! We are mad and we will not take it anymore.
He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.
Ahhh, the great white whale of LA Politics: Breakup! All our problems will be solved if we could just break up the city, or break up the school district.
Ronnie, you know my rant: As long as this debate pivots on the governance structure, you've lost me. I want to hear the post-breakup plan. I'll stipulate to shattering the district into smaller units, if you'll tell me what the next day looks like.
My problem with LAUSD breakup has always been the proponents' inability to answer fundamental questions: What specifically will you do to improve student performance? What specifically will you do to increase parental involvement? What specifically will you do to energize good teachers, and re-train or retire bad ones? What specifically will you do to update curricula, bring modern books and supplies to kids who need them, and make sure we're teaching them the skills they need to thrive in a globalized economy? How specifically will you improve test scores? How specifically will you deal with the myriad cultural, language and social issues that confront a vast majority of LAs school-age kids?
What's your plan?
Changing the governance structure does not deliver answers to those vital questions, nor ensure that leadership and vision will arise, where none existed previously, and carry the answers on a tablet down from the mountaintop.
Vaughn NCLS didn't succeed because of governance. It succeeded because of leadership, commitment and vision. Yvonne Chan is a dynamo. To be sure, she was aided by powerful tools at her disposal via the charter school designation. But a charter school without leadership and vision will suck just as hard as a non-charter school, and a non-charter school with a charismatic leader will thrive. I've seen it up close.
Here's another question: If I give you the destructive half of the equation (breakup), what constructive plan will you give me for getting the larger community to care and get involved?
Not just the parents of school-aged kids, who are hard enough to get engaged, but people who live in work in the community, don't have a direct tie to the schools, and blithely ignore their vested stake in the quality of education we're delivering to the children that the schools are turning out into community?
Non-parents in the RonKayeLA army: How many of you can even conjure the name of the three schools in your neighborhood school cluster -- elementary, junior high, high school? How about the name of the principals at those schools? How many of you have even thought about how you can support those schools and their mission, let alone done something about it besides bitch for breakup?
My wife and I have one child graduating high school this year, another just completing 9th grade. We made an affirmative decision to educate them in the public schools rather than private schools (which have their own problems), and as a consequence of that decision had a real responsibility to work down in the trenches of LA Unified.
During the LEARN era, I was a parent representative on the instructional transformation team for a school going through LEARN adoption. Later, I served on the leadership council of both a neighborhood school and a magnet school.
I've seen firsthand the power of a strong principal and committed teacher, parent and student communities. I've also seen firsthand the paralysis of weak leadership and a poorly energized community.
I have neither time nor interest in spending another minute (hour, day, week, month, year, decade) debating LAUSD's governance structure. Let the dilettantes argue about that, as they have lo these many years, while sipping white wine in Eli Broad's salon.
Instead, bring me leadership, vision and community involvement. People willing to engage their local schools, identify the problems those schools are facing, join the leadership councils (which include community at large as well as parent, teacher and adminstrator volunteers).
People willing to make change happen, rather than wishing for a breakup that ain't ever gonna come -- and even if it did, wouldn't solve a single problem on its own.
A crazy uncle of mine used to like saying: If you wish in one hand and shit in the other, guess which one gets filled first?
Caterwauling about breakup in lieu of actually getting involved to effect change is just that: Wishing in one hand and shitting in the other.
Call me when you get past that and have a real plan for what happens on the day after breakup. Or, better yet, when you're working on the ground with your neighborhood school now rather than bleating for the false panacea of a breakup.
Caterwauling? Moby Dick? Your crazy uncle shitting in his hand? Eli Broad's salon? Where do you think you are, The Huffington Post?
What I heard of regarding the report is that some LAUSD elementary schools are just as good as, or better than, some elementary charter schools. The Valley surely has some of those schools.
Keep in mind also that charter schools only do well if they have great leadership. There was a charter school in Pasadena that ran out of money to pay its teachers recently---it was all over the Pasadena Star. Thus, the Pasadena board of edu. is taking a hard look at charters before letting them open willy-nilly in their district.
A charter school can be just as bad as a normal public school if it has poor leadership. One of the things that continues to plague LAUSD's leadership is the fact that principals do not get to choose their own assignments. Unless something has changed that I don't know about, when you are an administrator for LA you go where they tell you.
If you are an admin. for a charter school you go where you want to go.
Surely this is part of why charters are succeeding. That, plus they have local control over their budget money AND generally have higher parent involvement---indeed, many of them require parent volunteer hours or else the student might be asked to leave the school.
Accountability is thus required from all parties involved in the education process (not just from the teachers as NCLB demands).
How crazy is that?
[The Times refused to publish this op-ed, and so far the Daily News, which publishes my other stuff, has never printed something I've written critical of charters. So maybe Ron will post it -he's a former DN editor. It's a rebuttal to that pro-charter report that came out Tuesday that Ron seems to think marks the beginning of the end for LAUSD.]
PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS OUTSCORE THE CHARTERS!
A California Charter School Association puff piece released to the press
this week not surprisingly shows their campuses outperform traditional public
schools. While the Times headline trumpeted the charters' success,
what wasn't reported is that charters lag noticeably behind their
conventional counterparts in preparing graduates for college level work in
English.
Charters take great pride in the number of their graduates who move on to
college. Their advocates love to "prove" that non-charter grads are
unprepared for the rigorous academic work demanded at universities. That
point was made recently in another deceitful bit of spin doctoring, this
one a press release supporting the anti-public education philosophy of a
right-wing San Francisco think tank.
Under the title "Beware`less-than-best' Schools," Pacific Research
Institute education specialist Lance Izumi demonstrated that even the most
outstanding public schools fail to prepare their grads for college. To do
this, Izumi selected several Southern California high schools listed by
Forbes and U. S. News and World Report as among the best in the nation.
His conclusion is based on a single test: the California State University
Early Assessment Program [EAP]. It's given to the state's eleventh graders
to determine their readiness for college level work in English.
Izumi found the test results at the traditional public high schools
shocking. But he ignored the even worse scores of charter school students.
Nor did he note that college-bound students who fail the test are advised
to take additional work in English in their senior year. This test does
not mean that at graduation kids who failed a year earlier are still
unprepared for college work in English.
While belittling the achievement of public school students, he omitted EAP
results demonstrating that students in traditional high schools
consistently outscore those in charter schools.
Izumi ridiculed the test scores at five affluent public high schools -
Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Palos Verdes High, San Marino and
Santa Monica - by focusing exclusively on EAP test scores for English
readiness.
Using the 2006 test, he labeled San Marino's scores "surprisingly anemic"
when only 48% of its eleventh graders were rated "college ready."
Long before Izumi wrote his article, the 2007 test results were available,
posted last August. Had he cited them would he still have denounced as
"surprisingly anemic" San Marino's 61% pass rate, among the highest in the
state?
Izumi denigrated the 33% pass rate at Palos Verdes High and a "just 44%" at
Palos Verdes Peninsula High. Again those were 2006 scores. Peninsula's
2007 score was only slightly higher, at 45%, but its sister school raised
its total to 47%.
Both exceeded any charter school in L. A. county.
Izumi's flawed statistics are bolstered by omitting critical information.
Although dismayed by a passing score from only 10% of Beverly Hills' 11th
graders, Izumi never pointed out that in 2006 less than half the class took
the EAP. In 2007, 94% of Beverly Hills' juniors took the exam and the pass
rate increased to 29%.
Nor did he mention any test scores from L. A. county charter schools. Had
he done so, his argument would have vanished.
Thirty-five Los Angeles county charters took the English EAP in 2007. In
12, zero students passed the test. The number of charter students tested
at those 12 was significant: 92 at one school, 91 at another, many with
over 70 students. Yet not one student passed the test indicating college
readiness.
The best charter in L.A. county came from a traditional public school that
converted to a charter: Granada Hills. It scored what Izumi would surely
call an "extremely anemic" 36% passing score.
The average high school pass rate in all L. A. county schools - traditional
and charter - was 14%. But only 5 of the 35 charter schools reached that
level, and two of those were traditional schools that converted to charter
status and are not run by the usual charter advocates.
Instead of touting charters, Izumi should release another survey explaining
what makes our traditional schools so much better than his vaunted charters.
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{Contact Cal Poly Pomona professor emeritus of history Ralph E. Shaffer at reshaffer@csupomona.edu]