Poor Marks for L.A. Unified

The Los Angeles Unified School District earned poor marks Friday in its ongoing effort to reform special education programs, with an independent court monitor reporting that he doubted the district would make all mandated improvements by next summer’s deadline.

Among other criticisms, monitor Carl Cohn reported that the district was lagging in its efforts to integrate special education students into the general school population and that the district had completed only a tiny percentage of renovation projects intended to provide “handicapped access” for children with disabilities.

Cohn also reported that he was deeply concerned by some schools’ records of consistently suspending students with disabilities and the district’s “abysmal” progress in correcting a problem in which African American students were disproportionately identified as emotionally disturbed. The report, which focused on the 2004-05 school year, described the district’s progress toward achieving 18 specific performance goals by June 2006.

The goals were part of a settlement in a class-action lawsuit that families of special education students brought against the district. The goals, and the timeline for meeting them, are referred to as the modified consent decree.

In his report, Cohn commended the district for its progress on five of the goals, which included placement of students with specific learning disabilities, response time to parental complaints and dispute resolution.

But he wrote that efforts to reach some goals appeared stymied by “bureaucratic inertia.”

“Despite the flurry of policies and memorandums emanating from the district’s special education bureaucracy, there is little indication that ownership of this reform effort has ... penetrated to the school level,” Cohn wrote.

District officials were still reviewing the 38-page report Friday and said they could not respond to specific criticisms. But a top school official said she was confident that the district would achieve all 18 goals before the deadline.

“We will meet the benchmark by June ‘06,” said Deputy Supt. Rowena Lagrossa. “We’re optimistic, and we’re making all of us accountable.”

She said the district expects to achieve five more goals in August, when new testing data are released.

Lagrossa said the perception of “bureaucratic inertia” was due to the fact that the district had been busy “building the infrastructure” for reform efforts and was just now connecting schools and students to that infrastructure. “We’re working at changing a culture, which takes time,” she said.

Cohn, the former longtime superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District, was selected to be independent monitor in May 2003, after a modification of the original consent decree. The independent monitor does not work for the district. He is responsible for determining whether L.A. Unified meets the targets of the modified consent decree and special education law.

L.A. Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 for its failure to comply with special education law. That oversight will continue until the district meets the goals.