L.A. as an Educational Lab

Financier Eli Broad should use the Los Angeles Unified School District as a laboratory for his nationwide $100-million educational reform campaign to improve urban school management. If his team can strengthen principals forced to manage without full authority, improve labor relations with an obstructive teachers union and shore up the new reform-minded school board, it can achieve a great civic purpose and a model for other low-performing school districts.

The Broad foundation will need top academic experts and political street fighters to accomplish systemic change. Few outsiders, for instance, are aware of arcane work rules that handcuff LAUSD principals, authorize veteran teachers to pick their classroom assignments on the basis of seniority and allow too many low-performing teachers to remain in the classrooms.

The team can learn from 45 educational funds already shaping the debate over school reform and improving public education, primarily in poor inner-city neighborhoods. Among the most successful is the Boston Plan for Excellence, which targets a school’s instructional focus, say literacy, and provides grants of up to $300,000, extensive training and other resources.

Broad’s team here should build on the experiences of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project and LEARN and also take a lesson on individual generosity, such as the $14-million gift from the foundation of inventor and entrepreneur Arnold Beckman to improve science instruction in Orange County elementary schools.

Broad’s timing is right. All across the region and the country, educational leaders are engaged in a debate over how to improve public schools. His generosity and foresight deserve plaudits from everyone who cares about public schools.