UCLA Grade School Weighs Seeking Charter

For much of its 112-year history, the prestigious, sometimes-criticized elementary school on the UCLA campus has been a place where some of the nation’s foremost educators tried out their ideas.

Many hallmarks of today’s education reform movement--including mixed-age classes, team teaching and cooperative, hands-on learning--have long been mainstays at the Seeds University Elementary School.

Now officials of one the nation’s few remaining university-run “laboratory” schools are considering applying for a state charter, a move that would put UES at the forefront of yet another innovation. It also would alter the course of this unique institution, often faulted for its likeness to elite private campuses, by turning it into a truly public school.

The fledgling charter school movement, which is rapidly catching on in California and several other reform-minded states, grants selected campuses great autonomy in their efforts to improve student achievement. Once their ideas have been approved by the local school board or the state, such schools are allowed to make their own decisions about everything from course offerings to hours of operation to staffing.

The charter move would allow UES financial stability. Currently a hybrid that is neither fully public nor fully private, the school is funded partly by the UCLA chancellor’s office--public money--but it charges tuition and is free to decide which students to take. If it becomes a charter school, it could count on the same per-pupil financing as other public schools and would be required to eliminate tuition, now up to $5,000 a year. Because of special legislation passed on its behalf, however, UES would not have to be affiliated with a school district, as other charter schools are.

Along with the money would come the uncertainties that go with a new partnership--in this case, the state Department of Education, which would issue the charter. Also, the school would need to find ways to make up the difference between the state financing and the higher costs of operating UES.

The charter proposal comes as university officials are trying to broaden the lab school’s role in efforts to overhaul American education. At the same time, the state’s continuing recession and the resulting budget cuts in its college and university systems have forced the lab school to increase tuition and step up private fund-raising campaigns. Over a five-year period, the UCLA chancellor’s office is withdrawing its $1-million annual cash subsidy--half of UES’ yearly budget.

With a charter, allowed in California since January, 1993, the lab school could keep most of its crucial freedom from Department of Education rules and regulations while receiving state financing as a public school. It also could help light the way for those public campuses beginning to grapple with issues raised by their newfound independence.

“We never thought about the charter as an answer to the budget problem but as a way to connect more clearly to the public schools, to become directly a part of that system,” said Theodore Mitchell, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education, which oversees the campus elementary school.

Yet Mitchell acknowledged that university budget cuts, which have led to steady annual climbs in lab school tuition, “certainly focused attention” on the school’s need to resolve how best to fulfill its mission while maintaining a quality education for an increasingly diverse group of students.

For years, UES, tucked into an exquisite, redwood-studded plot with a creek along Sunset Boulevard, has worked to provide research, develop innovations in instruction and disseminate proven methods that are relevant to public schools. Its reputation and location in affluent Westwood ensure it far more applicants than it can accept, despite steadily rising tuitions. Its students’ parents tend to be very involved. Many make extraordinary efforts to get their children to the school, which does not provide transportation, and to adjust their schedules to the high number of pupil-free days set aside for faculty members to plan lessons together and update their skills.

All this has cost UES some credibility among public school faculties.

“I’ve received too many comments from teachers and principals saying, ‘You just don’t know what it’s like out here.’ Their view is that you can’t do much of this as a public school,” said Deborah Stipek, UCLA professor of education and director of UES.

But there are drawbacks to going public, and the proposal is sparking passionate debate.

“When you begin talking about people’s children, it’s amazing how emotional things can get,” said John Brice, the father of a UES 7-year-old and one of three presidents of the Family School Alliance, the lab school’s equivalent of the PTA.

“There is a range of reactions from parents, and the range of concern varies from family to family,” said Brice, who attended UES as a child and is well acquainted with the strong, protective feelings the school stirs in its families and alumni. *

Financing is a major concern. As a public school, UES would not be allowed to charge tuition or other fees to make up the difference between its share of tax dollars and the costs of running the lab school, which are higher in part because of the research and workshops conducted there. As a tuition-charging school, however, it is harder to attract very poor children, who are attending California public schools in increasing numbers. Some parents feel increased fund-raising efforts detract from the school’s “egalitarian” atmosphere and put too much emphasis on money.

The longevity of the charter schools experiment is another concern. Each charter lasts only five years and prospects for renewal of the program are unclear. Another concern is educational quality, especially since UES costs more than the average public school.

“In general, people who come to UES see it as a place that is terrifically sensitive to children. . . . Whether you have a lot of money or little money, they do a great job. It’s a marvelous environment,” said Brice, who added that he sees broad agreement on such goals as further increasing student diversity and broadening the school’s role in education reforms. “The issue is, how do we get there? This is not an easy decision.”

Change--often precipitated by crisis--is not unusual for the lab school that began Downtown in 1882 as a teacher training institution at the Los Angeles Central Library. It affiliated with UCLA in 1919 and moved onto the Westwood campus in 1947.

Corinne A. Seeds, its namesake and progressive principal from 1925 to 1957, raised hackles with some of her projects: having her students send materials to Japanese American students in internment camps during World War II and teaching about Russia during the Cold War.

Seeds’ successors, including some of the best-known education leaders of their time, put their own stamps on the school. Team teaching and multi-age grouping came in while John Goodlad was director, and during Madeline Hunter’s 20-year tenure as principal there was an emphasis on developing teacher skill as the key to a student’s academic achievement.

In 1989, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young proposed moving UES off campus and giving it to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. The following year, after strong opposition from lab school parents and alumni, he agreed to keep the facility on campus but told officials the school must sharpen its focus on research and dissemination to ensure its future with the university.

UES officials have tried to do that, in part by diversifying the enrollment so that it better reflects the ethnic and economic mix in California’s public schools. About half the 462 students receive financial aid and 36% have annual family incomes of less than $35,000. Almost 12% come from families earning $250,000 or more. Half are white, nearly 16% are Latino, 14% are African American and 11% are Asian; some are just learning English.

The school has held workshops for thousands of California teachers and administrators, forged partnerships with three Los Angeles Unified School District elementary campuses, assisted with the development of state curriculum guides and engaged in research projects, ranging from classroom assessment practices to home and school effects on Latino students’ academic achievement.

Mitchell, the education school dean, said UES has proved “there is a great need for a lab-school-like environment where we can take our experience and make the transition between research and practice a smoother and shorter one.”

He said he views the charter debate--which probably will not be decided until the fall--as primarily “a technical set of questions about how we can best continue to pursue the UES mission.”

Unlike the 1989 debate, Mitchell added, “this is not about whether UES should continue and what it will look like. . . . I think we are all in fundamental agreement on the (goal) and are trying to work out the means.”