Should schools be blown up?

Admiral David Brewer, superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District, dropped by the editorial board the other day to discuss, among other things, the problems of English-language learners and his own on-again-off-again plan to create a mini-district for low-performing schools. Some highlights:

English language learners

David Brewer: We have the largest English-language learner population in the nation, over 200-some-odd thousand students. If we were to carve them out as a separate district, they would be the sixth-largest district in the nation. That population right there is the most challenged population. And there's an irony with that population; 70% of them are native born. And so we said, OK, so what's driving this low achievement throughout the system? Well, the standard English learners, a percentage of whom are also African Americans, are also in this mix. So when we began to look at it we said, my God, if, if you look at one of the pieces, called Reclassification to Fluent English Proficiency, and we're reclassifying about 50% of that population K through 5. That means 50% of that population's showing up in middle school not prepared, frankly speaking, for middle school, because of language. And so we said, OK, then we have to go to a family-of-schools approach.

Now you've heard all the UTLA rumblings. If a separate district was the answer, let them run it, was my position. But when I went and presented to the task force our findings, UTLA came back and said — you know, they were clearly opposed to a separate district. When I look back at [former superintendent Ruben] Zacharias, people were opposed to his hundred schools, because of the labeling, of the stigmatism. And my counter to that has been quite clear. I think that in L.A. the general public, other than through the 1381 debate, you know, really does not know how well or how badly the schools are doing. I don't think they really know. I don't think they're really focused on it.

Jim Newton: You mean they don't know how the school where their children are going is performing or they don't know globally how the whole system is...

David Brewer: I think both, in some cases. If you asked the average parent, how well is your school doing, I wonder what they'd tell you. Now I haven't surveyed that. It really goes back to the whole, it counters the whole stigmatization argument. We have schools that have been in program-improvement status for nine years. Now I think most of those parents probably know that those schools are not doing well. Now program-improvement has its own politics, because you can have great students inside of those schools that are doing well, but the thing about NCLB is it shines a light on the schools that are in the shadows... Because we have such a large population of ELs and SELs, that's the reason I'm having this national summit in December. We have to focus like a laser on that in order to drive this school district to what I would consider world-class academic standards. [...]

Karin Klein: What kind of power will you have over the way pre-schools do things if you do manage to get more kids into pre-school? Because I know that LAUP's priority at this point is not to focus on English-language instruction and to let kids continue in their native language.

David Brewer: To the extent that I'm dealing the LAUPs and the private folks, then I have to, you know, work with them on that. To the extent that I have my own early education centers and I'm building more and more of those, then I'll have a lot of influence. You know, that's a partnering and articulation conversation that we're going to have to have. [...]

Karin Klein: What are the schools that successfully reclassify kids from English-language learner, what are they doing?

David Brewer: A lot of it goes back to professional development. A lot of it is just the way they do business. Many of them are using the same tool — open court — to do it. They're working harder and longer and have teachers working there who know how to get it done.

Training for the district

David Brewer: People keep asking what I'm really doing. What I'm really doing is putting in the systemic changes inside the, what I call inside of the school walls, in order to make this district work the way it's supposed to work.

Jim Newton: Give us an example of one of those. What's a change you're making inside a school wall that is making life better for children in that school?

David Brewer: Professional learning development and leadership is going to be really at the core of this. If you're going to have a world-class faculty, world-class organization, your people have to be well trained in leadership and management. That is not the case. That's why I created a position — I recognized that probably within three to four months of getting here. I called for that appointment; I finally got it in July. What you will see in many cases is that you put people into positions with absolutely no training with the exception of credentialing for teachers and leadership academy for principals. But everything else, no. There's nothing there. And even there we can do a much better job, because our position is that teachers need leadership and management training just like principals do. For several reasons, because they eventually become your principles, in many cases. They eventually become your administrators. For a system not to have that in place, to me, is ridiculous... When you benchmark against other districts we are woefully behind. [...]

Tim Cavanaugh: How much does the district spend on professional development right now?

David Brewer: Right now we don't know. Because right now everybody's doing their own thing... Estimates run somewhere in the neighborhood of $400... That's everything that's out there. That's people coming up to us and saying we want you to try this program. Or some classroom teacher saying we want to try this program. I mean, right now there is no coherence in the program. [...]

Joel Rubin: Do you have any idea how much you're going to have to spend on professional development in the system that you want to have?

David Brewer: Ah, no, not yet, I don't have that yet, Joel. I don't know.

Karin Klein: When you say everybody does their own thing, is that at the school-site level, the principle decides what the professional training will be?

David Brewer: Yes, in some cases that is indeed what happens.