A Bully Pulpit for the Schools

Mayor Richard Riordan has made education a major priority and says he is determined to improve the public schools. However, unlike some big-city mayors, he lacks official authority over public education. He must depend on his powers of persuasion, his political acumen and his personal charitable foundation to prod reforms. He can be more effective if the Los Angeles school board embraces help from City Hall instead of protecting its political turf.

The mayor’s attention to public education could be interpreted as a power grab or meddling if the Los Angeles schools were among the best in the nation. But, as their generally very low standardized test scores indicate, most of the district’s campuses are failing to properly educate most children. The scores, averaging in the bottom one-third nationally, should sound a call to other leaders, especially in the corporate sector, to turn greater and sustained attention to the challenge of improving student achievement.

The new superintendent, Ruben Zacarias, has shown himself willing to accept the mayor’s help. Their collegial relationship is a hopeful sign in a school district that traditionally shuns outsiders. Zacarias and Riordan traveled together to Detroit last week to a national summit of big-city mayors and urban school chiefs to focus on how to fix schools. Like the mayors of Chicago and Boston, who now exercise municipal oversight of public schools, Riordan gets it. They understand that good schools help cities attract employers and employees. Good schools retain affluent and middle-class residents, who keep the tax base healthy. Good schools are good for cities.

Riordan doesn’t have the clout of Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley, who took control of the failed public schools in 1995. Since then, test scores there have risen. Dropout rates have decreased. Social promotions, the practice of passing a child based on age instead of knowledge, have been stopped. Children who need help receive tutoring and must attend summer school, rarely offered at the elementary level in most districts, including Los Angeles Unified.

Daley ushered in a refreshing era of accountability, something Los Angeles lacks. Principals and teachers in Chicago are held responsible, as they should be, when schools don’t work and children don’t learn. When schools fail, principals and faculty members are placed on probation and given help by master teachers and principals. If they don’t improve student achievement, they are reassigned.

In Los Angeles, Riordan has been long involved with public education. He was Mayor Tom Bradley’s first advisor on LEARN, the district’s major reform effort. He bought computers a decade ago for the district’s 10 lowest-achieving schools program. More recently, he vigorously supported Proposition BB, the district’s $2.4-billion school bond measure. Riordan insists the L.A. schools need a revolution. “We owe it to the kids,” he says. He’s right, and others should walk arm in arm with him to fix public schools.