LEARN’s Reforms: Last Stop Before Vouchers or Breakup? : For ailing school district, the broad-based coalition remains the best hope

LEARN(Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now) is at a critical juncture in its attempt to remake public education in Los Angeles. LEARN is probably the last, best chance to keep public education here viable. If the reform effort does not get the support it requires from the administration of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and from parents and teachers, it will fail and the arguments against more drastic “solutions”--vouchers or even the breakup of the district itself--will seem far less compelling.

Let that reality be a fire particularly under the LAUSD’s administration, which must break out of a numbingly bureaucratic mind-set that reactively asserts why something cannot be done, not how it can be. When a school wants to innovate, too often the district responds by making the change hard if not impossible.

Example: One school that was working to involve more parents decided it needed a newsletter, and a teacher volunteered to type it. Somehow the central administration office heard about this, and soon the teacher got a memo telling her that teachers could not do typing, only “classified” (secretaries and others) could. This is the sort of maddening, counterproductive irritation--fueled sometimes by protective union rules or by-the-book bureaucrats trying to justify their existence--that occurs daily within the LAUSD. The district must become less a slave to rules and more an advocate for allowing a school to do what makes sense for that campus--in spite of the rules. Right now, too many parents, principals and teachers see the central bureaucracy as an obstacle to change and flexibility, not a facilitator. The school board, composed of part-time members, can prod the bureaucracy to fix specific problems but that merely prompts the LAUSD to keep a staff of administrators to run around putting out political fires. Nothing in this setup encourages the kind of systemic change and local school control that is regularly responsive to student and parent needs.

GETTING WORD TO THE COMMUNITY: LEARN, a coalition of business, community, educator and parent leaders, entered this muddled picture in 1991. Schools officially began signing on to the effort last year. Much of the LEARN focus thus far has been on reforming how decisions are made at the local school level, and working to ensure more school-site control. So far, 87 of the district’s 870 schools are LEARN schools. Now LEARN needs to do a better job of answering this often-asked question: Just what does it mean to be a LEARN school?

Already the LAUSD has magnet schools, charter schools and LEARN schools--designations that can be confusing. Actually any school can be a LEARN school if the faculty and parents agree to sign on. LEARN must get the word out: It is not a specific instructional program or a formula handed out to instantly make schools better. LEARN is simply an umbrella name for all the parents, educators and civic-minded Angelenos determined to make the schools responsive, accountable and the best they can be. LEARN has set up a process to make that happen and offers a key reform tool--privately funded training--to parents, teachers, principals and other school employees. The idea is everyone should be rowing in the same direction, and training helps.

AVERTING CHANGE FROM ‘OUTSIDE’: Now those who work full-time in this restructuring effort, including Mike Roos, the former state Assembly leader who is credited with giving LEARN the political savvy it needed to get broad-based support, must take it further. Parents and teachers need to see that the primary benefit of LEARN is that it breaks through obstructionist red tape so that parents and educators are free to permeate the public schools with the “can do” spirit--banishing the “can’t do, won’t do, don’t have to” attitude too often in evidence in the LAUSD. Change happens in many little ways, with lots of small victories, and it takes time. Do teachers, principals, parents, school employees, administrators have the political will to stick to it, to work to change the way public schools are run, to change the very culture? They must. Otherwise, change will be imposed from the outside, and it won’t necessarily be for the better. One way or another, change is coming.

What parents and teachers care most about is what goes on in the classroom. Performance must improve. LEARN is on the tough but necessary journey leading to that improvement. When parents and teachers see that being a LEARN school can mean that school life is better--that parents are heard and involved, that teachers are set free to teach, that students learn and can demonstrate steady improvement--everyone will be demanding to be under the LEARN umbrella. And if the LAUSD administration is smart, it will be leading the charge to make it happen.