Give L.A. Schools a Chance, Not a Sledgehammer of Change

Ruben Zacarias is emerging as the potential strong education leader that Los Angeles has long awaited. The superintendent has demanded reform of the 100 worst schools in the school district and is holding the principals of those schools accountable for improving the educational achievement of their students. He has taken decisive action in getting the air conditioning our schools need. In short, he is demonstrating willingness to take head-on the hard problems that stand in the way of improving educational achievement.

Ahead lies the more daunting and ultimately more critical task of leading the Los Angeles Unified School District into true reform. It is by now clear that schools improve in student achievement when school communities are empowered and principals are held accountable and are given managerial discretion to lead.

Zacarias will find that the task of achieving reform in 100% of the LAUSD schools is no easier than is the job of turning around Ford or repositioning Hughes Electronics. But such huge tasks can be done if everyone pulls together.

In Los Angeles, we are blessed with the unusual circumstance of having within LEARN, the district’s educational reform program, the active cooperation of the teachers’ union, the service employees’ union, the principals’ and administrators’ association, the County Federation of Labor and many elements of the business community. All are pulling together to support the strong leadership that we are getting from Zacarias. If we continue with a sense of urgency balanced with prudence, our children will be the winners.

From time to time, one or another effort arises to bring about change in the LAUSD through upheaval. The proponents of vouchers and of a district break-up appear to believe that leadership will never materialize and that change will never occur except by taking a sledgehammer to the district and busting it into smithereens. An organization, however, is not like a cement block; it is more like a Swiss watch or a piece of intricate software, and a sledgehammer is a poor choice of tools for improving it. Suppose that the federal government had sought to “save” or to “reform” Ford or Hughes Electronics by using a legislative sledgehammer, rather than allowing the management to apply a scalpel in a careful, knowledgeable way.

All of us who care about the education of all of our children should keep the heat on the superintendent and on the school board to tackle the process of reform with urgency, but we should also want them to proceed with prudence. We should continue to hold them accountable for progress in student achievement, but we should not take a sledgehammer to our children’s education. Zacarias is showing that he has the courage to lead and the experience and judgment to succeed. Let’s all get on his end of the rope and pull together for the good of all the children entrusted to us.