PERSPECTIVE ON SCHOOLS : Letting Parents Rule Is No Answer : The LAUSD needs to be reorganized and refocused; it doesn’t need new faces in the failing old structure.

To be a parent of a student in the Los Angeles Unified School District is to know the meaning of frustration.

A group of parents have submitted an 11-page report to the district that spells out their frustration with a system that is unresponsive and often disdainful of them. But the report’s recommendations, while understandable, do not address the fundamental problem facing the second-largest school district in the nation--how to successfully educate students so that they will have real options and opportunities in the coming global society.

The parents’ recommendations for how LAUSD is to be organized and governed suggest that the answer to educational excellence lies in turning over control of the district to parents. On the surface, this is a seductive argument, but a flawed solution. The endless war by adults for control of this district is a distraction. It gets in the way of the real discussion and work that needs to begin, in a serious way, in LAUSD--raising student achievement.

The other troubling aspect of the set of recommendations is that it flies in the face of LEARN, the district’s program for the reorganization of schools.

LEARN (the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now) is the concept presented to the LAUSD two years ago by a working group augmented by more than 600 community trustees from every walk of life who believe that the basic problem facing the district is the plethora of rules and compliances it is bound by. The recommendations proposed by the parents’ group last week attempt to flesh out the vagueness of the LEARN plan. The uniqueness of the LEARN plan is its intentional vagueness--which could also be viewed as its greatest weakness, if people misunderstand the fundamental concept.

LEARN is not about student achievement as much as it is about a process that, if allowed to take root, can ultimately lead to academic excellence for all students. I am most concerned about the academic achievement of African American, Latino and other students of color in a district that has done miserably by them to this point. LEARN is an attempt to change a compliance-driven bureaucracy to an outcome-driven district responsive to the needs of students, parents, teachers and administrators at the school site, where instruction is delivered. It is an invitation to work collaboratively across interest groups to build a climate and a culture at each school and within each school cluster that meets the unique needs of that community’s student learners. It is an invitation to set aside the hostile, adversarial, inflexible attitudes that have haunted this district--attitudes that have hardened as its clients have become more and more people of color.

The intention of LEARN is to provide a process, not a blueprint, for discussion, careful thought, incisive critiquing, risk-taking and ultimately the action necessary to build school communities where all children will learn. Each school community receives training that arms a principal, a lead teacher and a parent representative with introductory skills to be effective leaders of change.

LEARN is a way out of the morass of compliances, rules and regulations that now suffocate any attempt to change outcomes for students. Last week’s recommendations to the LAUSD would lead us back down that path--no change in mentality, only in the power players.

The parent group’s recommendations would let the district off the hook. It is the district’s job to develop sound education policy and find the resources to implement its policies. The district must retrain its employees so that they can deliver a world-class curriculum complete with standards and accountability that end disparity of achievement by race, gender, socioeconomic and linguistic group. There must be consequences for failure. It is our job, as parents, community members, citizens and taxpayers to watch, critique, participate, educate and organize ourselves in such a way that if change does not occur, or change that we are satisfied with, we can take corrective action swiftly.