Kevin Collins

Los Angeles Seminar

March 6, 2007

 

            The Los Angeles Unified School is the second largest public school district and the largest school district in the state of California. With this said, Los Angeles Unified School District otherwise known as “The District” or “LAUSD”educated during the 2006-2007 school year 708,461 and employed 77,377 people in variety of positions ranging from central district staff, teachers, administrators, janitors, grounds people, police, school support, etc. Additionally, with a budget of $11.2 billion, if LAUSD was for-profit, it would qualify as a fortune 500 company (2006-2007 LAUSD Fact Sheet). Clearly, based upon these numbers LAUSD is a major player in regional economic development as the second largest employer in Los Angeles County (2006-2007 LAUSD Fact Sheet). However, with this said, LAUSD has a multitude of short and long term problems which unless they are thoroughly examined will affect the future of Los Angeles from a multitude of political, social and economic perspectives. For the remainder of this paper, I will examine the Los Angeles Unified School District by providing an overview of the system with special attention given to some recent district-wide initiatives. Additionally, I have divided the paper into several smaller sub-sections which examine the following topics: governance and oversight, demographics and geographical layout, the next generation of schools and the small schools project, and teaching and learning reforms,

Governance and Oversight

            LAUSD is a local governmental entity which is responsible to the people of Los Angeles County. However, unlike other governmental agencies and services, LAUSD does not directly report to members of local city government, for example: the mayor or city council. LAUSD is, however, accountable to both County of Los Angeles Department of Education, which certifies the budget twice annually and the State of California, where based upon a complicated formula receives a significant portion of state aid, which predicated upon the number of students who are educated by the school district. LAUSD from an organizational perspective is led by a Superintendent who serves at the pleasure and is appointed by a seven member school board. The seven members of the school board are accountable to people of Los Angeles County. These seven individuals serve for a period of four years as elections are held on the first Tuesday in March. The School Board provides direct oversight to LAUSD and is responsible for the ratification of all procedural and policy decisions which are initially developed by one of the central district administrative staff members who work in conjunction with and under the leader of the superintendent. Currently, Marlene Canter, the co-founder and the co-CEO of Canter & Associates, now Laureate Education was appointed by her school board colleagues to be the Board’s Chair or President.

In late October 2006, LAUSD also announced the appointment of Admiral David Brewer as the district’s most recent superintendent, replacing the now retired Roy Romer, who prior to accepting the post was the governor of Colorado. As the second largest school districts in the country, LAUSD has found itself confronted with a plethora of leadership challenges. One of these challenges is apparent by examining the composition and background of both the School Board as well as the current former superintendents. Admiral David Brewer, an African-American, who served the nation for thirty-five years in the United States Navy has no specialized training in the field of education or education management (LAUSD Press Release, October 12, 2006). In a press conference at the time of his appointment, Marlene Cantor, the President of the School Board claimed that Brewer had years of working in and developing educational programs in the Navy, which made him qualified to be the leader of one of the nation’s most challenging school districts. Brewer himself at the same press conference exclaimed in his words that “education was in his genes” citing that he is from a family of educators. His mother was a school teacher for thirty-five years and his sister is a graduate of one of the nation’s most recognized education schools: “Teachers College, Columbia University,” and is the superintendent of an unspecified school district on the east coast (LAUSD Press Release, October 12, 2006).  Brewer’s appointment by the School Board and a search committee consisting of community constituents including the President of Loyola Marymount University, business leader, and concerned parents was at the time extremely surprising.

However, prior to Brewer’s appointment his predecessor under the leadership of Roy Rome profound structural and organizational changes reshaped the district including the creation of eight mini-districts, relocated the central district offices to one building in downtown Los Angeles and led the largest capital campaign which raised revenue generated from bond referendums to build new schools in areas most impacted by changes in demographic trends, Romer did not have a distinguished background or training in field of education. Clearly, it should be acknowledged having a distinguished background in the field of education as a researcher or skilled practitioner and leader and terminal degree in the field or a related discipline, does not automatically make one more qualified for the job, but it does provide the larger community with the confidence that one is aware of the challenges and is going to put forth an agenda to solve the problems. However, with little to no training in the field or experience running a comparable urban school district, (assuming one exists) Brewer’s background does not inspire confidence that the challenges facing the district will be solved anytime in the near future. The sheer amount of time to discover the challenges facing the school district is enormous, especially when the leader has little to no experience in K-12 education. It is assumed that the leader of such a high profile position like this one would be knowledgeable enough to articulate a vision for the future school district and have the ability to work in coalition with a number of very large unions (United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) is the largest and most powerful) is a difficult, maybe impossible job for any one person.

Demographics and Geographical Layout of the LAUSD

            The Los Angeles Unified School District is vast in size and serves all of Los Angeles County with the exception of several incorporated cities, who have seceded from LAUSD as well as the city and became their own governmental entities. Some of these incorporated cities include: Agoura, Bell Gardens, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Calabasas, Carson, Claremont, Culver City, El Segundo, Glendale, Huntington Beach, Inglewood, La Canada, Lancaster, Long Beach, Lynwood, Manhattan Beach, Montebello, Monterrey Park, Palmdale, Pasadena, Playa Del Ray, Rolling Hills Estates, San Marino, Santa Monica, Santa Clarita, South Gate, South Pasadena, Torrance, Whittier, and several others. The school district serves a vast area of Los Angeles County beginning as far west as Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley, Porter Ranch in the North, Sylmar in the East, North Hollywood in the Southern half of the Valley. Additionally, LAUSD also serves the city of Los Angeles as far West as Santa Monica, a majority of South Los Angeles reaching as far as Long Beach (but not including) and the Eastern half Los Angeles the boundaries stretch as far as the City of Commerce, South Gate, Gardena, Compton and Carson as one heads to the district most southern boundaries. The Los Angles Unified School also serves a small portion of the San Gabriel Valley including Eagle Rock, and a small portion of Alhambra, as the remainder of the San Gabriel Valley consists of incorporated cities.

In a nutshell, the district serves a vast amount of land and cities which have very divergent demographics, socio-economic conditions, community needs, etc. It was for this reason that during the Superintendent Roy Romer’s tenure that the school district was divided into eight smaller mini-districts with district offices located in each geographical region, led by a mini-superintendent. The district mini-superintendent’s supervise and oversee the elementary, middle and secondary schools located in each smaller region. However, it should be made clear from a governance perspective, very few decisions arise from mini-districts governance or oversight instead the leadership and guidance for school reforms, curriculum initiatives, school organizational design, etc. are mandated by bureaucrats who are based out of the district’s central offices in downtown Los Angeles. As exhibited above, the district serves a tremendous portion of Los Angeles County, however, the organizational leadership remains top heavy as almost all decisions regarding the district’s future are made by the Superintendent’s central district staff in consultation with the School Board. Based upon this structure, it is essential in my view for the leader of the school district to have a distinguished background in education and educational management, especially the reform movement.

            Another challenge confronting LAUSD is the changing student demographics, especially in lieu of the larger illegal immigration problem in California as well as the remainder of the country. The school district currently serves students from all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds including 73.2 % Hispanics, 11.3% Black, 8.8% White, (Non-Hispanic) 3.8% Asian, 2.2% Pacific Islander (2006-2007 LAUSD Fact Sheet).  Upon further examination, it is important to note that many middle and upper-middle class families regardless of cultural or ethnic background do not send their children to the public schools because of the challenges facing the school district. The absence of predominately white middle and upper-middle class families has created a problem of “white flight,” though this term is no longer precise, because the flight has been expanded to any family from a plethora of ethnic/cultural backgrounds with the financial resources to send their children to private secular or religious private schools. It is important to note that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles according to Mike Davis book, City of Quartz, acknowledges that the Archdiocese educates approximately 314,000 students a year who attend 275 primary and 71 high schools making this loose confederation of Catholic Schools the second largest school district in the state of California (2006, p. 326). The numbers identified above also do not include the plethora of secular and other religious private schools which have surfaced as the private market has responded to the failure of one of the most essential public services. The story of the demographical changes in LAUSD represents an important story not yet told of how the school district only serves a population of students, whose parents could not otherwise afford to send their children to a local private school along with a large immigrant population. From a larger vantage point, the shift in population demographics means the issue of class, wealth, and social privilege is prevalent in yet another facet of everyday life in Los Angeles.

The Next Generation of Schools and the Small Schools Project

            One of the profound challenges confronting the LAUSD is the declining enrollment in middle and upper middle class areas within the school districts borders, however, in lower socio-economic and impoverished areas in the San Fernando Valley (with the exception of the West Valley, which is more affluent) Downtown, and Southern and Eastern Los Angeles have seen a spike in enrollment. As a result of the aging school infrastructure, the current system has failed to meet the needs of the present population as many students from the impacted areas identified were bussed to locations within the school district which has seen progressively lower enrollments. Therefore, as a result of the spike in enrollment in the areas with large Latino populations which have been identified above, LAUSD led a capital campaign to attain Federal and State grants, along with voter approved bond initiatives to build new schools in high impact schools.  The New School Construction Program as it was named, is a multi-year capital improvement program that is the major component of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s mission to relieve overcrowding in its schools and return students to a traditional two-semester

calendar. As of November 2006, the program is valued at over $10.8 billion and will deliver approximately 180,000 new seats by the end of the year 2013. State and local bond measures as well as other funding sources finance this program. A team of highly qualified District employees and professional experts has been assembled within the New Construction branch to manage this program (LAUSD New Construction, January 2007). Some of these highlights have included:

• 186 projects have been completed, including 65 new schools.

• 64 projects are under construction

• 26 Early Education Center expansions have been completed

• 2,650 classrooms have been completed

• 278 projects are designed or in design

• 457 schools have Implemented full-day kindergarten

• Over 1,200 parcels of land have been acquired

• Approximately 2,200 households & businesses have been relocated

• Over 150 relocated tenants have become first-time homeowners (LAUSD New Construction, January 2007).

 

The highlights identified above are the capital improvements completed over the course of the last couple of years as even with these structural changes, much more needs to be done to ensure the viability of the school district in the coming years.

            In addition to the capital improvements and infrastructure changes, LAUSD has also implemented a series of organizational changes which has been hailed by educational reformers as the “small school movement.” The small schools movement has led to the creation of Small Learning Communities (SLC’s) or learning academies within larger comprehensive middle and high schools designed to personalize the experience for students. In other words, SLC’s incorporate “common characteristics or attributes in their design: Unifying Vision/Identity, Rigorous Standards-Based Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, Equity and Access, Personalization, Accountability and Distributed Leadership, Collaboration/

Parent and Community Engagement, and Professional Development” (LAUSD Policy Bulletin, February 28, 2005). Since the mandated policy changes in 2005, the changes in organizational design have led to the creation of smaller learning communities in almost all middle and high schools in LAUSD. While the research supports that small learning communities improve teaching and learning, retention, and higher test scores, it unclear at this point whether this structural and organizational reform has led to substantial changes and greater learning outcomes.

Teaching and Learning Reforms

            In recent years increased focus has been placed on K-12 schools to increase student achievement as well as test scores. In order to ensure the test scores are raised the district has operationalized a number of “teaching and learning reforms” designed to ensure LAUSD meets the changing demands of the accountability movement, which has changed the way policymakers and central office district officials measure educational results. The accountability movement requires that teachers and school administrators be held responsible for improving test scores each year. One of the challenges confronting the District is the transient population which is served. Because of an influx of legal and illegal immigrants to the greater Los Angeles area, internal data that was studied in the late 1990’s illustrated a large portion of the students attending LAUSD schools moved or transferred during the school year. As a result, student transience has led to a multitude of larger problems which including curricular alignment and congruence. As articulated in an internal report written by Lynette Probst the transient student population required a comprehensive plan to meet the needs of these students who to know fault of their own often fell through the cracks because of the lack of curricular alignment and consistency in the classroom (1998, p. 13). To solve the challenges associated with student transience along with low standardized test scores, the district mandated that adoption of a common and scripted curriculum which was first implemented in the district’s elementary. The first of these programs was called “Open Court.” Open Court is a reading and language arts curriculum adopted by the district, which layouts and prescribes the curricular activities that are to be covered and taught daily in every elementary school teacher in the district. The adoption of the “open court” court curriculum was the first time in the districts history that curriculum alignment and congruence was mandated as a means to improve teaching and learning. The shift from curricular autonomy to curricular alignment and congruence was at first an unpopular change especially for those veteran teachers who had spent years creating and perfecting their curriculum. However, with rare exceptions, curricular alignment ensures that students who transfer schools mid-year can pick-up right where they left off. Prior to curricular alignment and congruence, transient students were negatively impacted when the change took place because of the lack of continuity in the curriculum as teachers were allowed a great deal of flexibility. With the regards to the larger teaching and learning issues, student transience was clearly an issue of concern as the transient students in elementary school were not developing the core skills in reading, writing and language arts which would be the essential foundation for success in middle and high school.

            As a result of the successful implementation of curricular alignment and congruence in the elementary schools, these initiatives have been expanded to middle and secondary grade levels in order to ensure that all students are receiving a quality education and also ensures that state curricular standards are being met in every classroom. District middle and high schools are currently confronting many of the same challenges the elementary schools faced prior to this district reform initiative. To align high school curriculums is a much more difficult task because the level of knowledge and sophistication necessary to be an effective teacher undermines in many ways the push toward curricular alignment and scripts which mandates the content that teachers are required to teach on any given day. However, with the federal reauthorization of No Child Left Behind only a few months away, school districts like LAUSD are doing everything possible to ensure that there are measures in place to raise test scores and reduce the high school drop out rate which is currently about 50% (LAUSD School Information Branch). There is no question that teaching and learning reforms will be necessary to meet the changing NCLB requirements and to raise test scores, however, the question still remains what should be the methods used to achieve these goals.      

            In conclusion, the Los Angeles Unified School mirrors many of the challenges that confront the city of Los Angeles as the school district is a paradox of contradictions, promises and failed initiatives. As an enormous governmental bureaucracy, LAUSD has made great strides to improve and amend the challenges of its past. However, the institutional memory of contradictory policies, low morale, multitude of lawsuits and settlements leading to federal intervention with regard to textbooks and special education funds, failed capital projects (Belmont Learning Community) hostilities between management and the powerful unions, and uncertainty regarding future monetary allocations for personnel and operational costs are only a few of the challenges confronting district leaders in the 21^st century. There is no question the Los Angeles Unified School District is both a model of urban excellence with regards to some programs and services currently offered by the district as well as urban failure because of the large amount of students who graduate with little to no skill sets affecting their competitiveness in the higher and post-secondary education and the workforce. Additionally, because of the large Hispanic legal and illegal population that the district serves any changes in Federal immigration policy will profoundly impact all district policy initiatives and changes. Los Angeles as discussed in a multitude of other settings is clearly sitting on the precipice of disaster. No matter, what instrument used to measure the effectiveness of the Los Angeles Unified School District, it would most likely receive a failing grade as the students who graduate from the impoverished school district are not equipped to compete in the global workforce. If an economic downturn was to arise similar to that of the recession that disseminated Southern California in the 1990’s in which the State cutback the amount of money awarded to school districts would prove disastrous for the school district. As I have identified in the above paragraphs, there is a plethora of structural problems, which are unique to Los Angeles and if remain unresolved will have profound consequences for the future of public education in the city of Los Angeles. This is especially true if the demographic characteristics continue to result in a middle-class flight from the public schools, creating a class based educational system divided largely by one principle: socio-economic class. In essence, Los Angeles as a prototype for America in the twenty-first century has some very serious challenges to solve with the consequences for the second largest public school system being extremely dire. Clearly, there are no certain answers, but the implications for not confronting the challenges outlined are even more unthinkable.

 

 

 

 

                                                Works Cited Page:

Davis, M (2006). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. New York: Verso Inc.

Probst, L. (1998). Transiency and Stability in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Los Angeles Unified School District Research and Evaluation Unit.

 

                                                Websites Consulted:

 

Los Angeles Unified School District: www.lausd.net containing a wealth of information which was cited throughout this paper.