Big Broom at the LAUSD

It has come to this in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines and Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller want to empty the central office of most administrators and staffers and send them back to the schools. The action, if approved, ought to make those who remain in their jobs more efficient and put their focus on instructional needs instead of building pet programs.

Cortines and Miller threaten to walk if the school board does not back the proposed reorganization. If they resign, they will take with them the best chance to avoid a breakup of the district, beat back the vouchers movement and reverse the plunge of the district’s test scores to the bottom of the state academic performance index.

Clearly in charge, Cortines and Miller have no debts of friendship like the many within the LAUSD, some decades old, that have obstructed reform. Neither backs away from a fight. Their reorganization plan, draconian by their own admission, is intended to redirect attention and dollars from the central administration to the campuses.

Most of the 710,000 students in the district can neither read nor do math at grade level. Cortines and Miller want stronger consequences for that failure. They seek top-to-bottom accountability, plus incentives for teachers tied to student improvement. The teachers union opposes linking performance to pay. In past showdowns on this issue, a school board majority, bought and paid for by United Teachers Los Angeles, has sided with labor. This time reform must win.

Cortines and Miller are scheduled to present their proposal to the board March 14. Administrators are already being notified that they might not have the same positions next year. These annual letters are usually meaningless. Not this year. Under the plan, some would become principals or take other administrative jobs on campus. Some would return to the classroom as teachers. Not all of these administrators would be welcome on campus. Some are downtown because they wanted out of the classroom, and some were more or less forced downtown because they failed at schools. Despite its imperfections, the plan puts the spotlight on students, where it needs to be. Some employees who wouldn’t want to return to schools would no doubt take early retirement or other employment.

Cortines blames many of the district’s failures on a profound disconnection between the mission of education and the performance of many teachers and administrators. Yes, thousands of teachers and administrators work very hard and excellently, but the superintendent also sees wasted efforts that do not help children excel. Some in the LAUSD, oblivious to California’s rigorous academic standards and sometimes resistant to standardized tests, are more caretaker than educator, dumbing down student work. Cortines points to one well-meaning teacher he observed who assigned her second-grade children to color within the lines on pictures--no words, no reading, no content.

Cortines and Miller blame the district’s routinely poor performance in part on years of neglect, politics, preferential hiring based on things other than educational success and weak superintendents who ran a system that was all process and no results.

The two reformers believe they can win one big battle for the children. That one chance for significant advancement should not be destroyed by obstructionists. What is wanted by those who insist on keeping the status quo? A district breakup that could lead to a dozen smaller but worse districts? Vouchers that allow parents to use public funds to send their children to private or parochial schools, thus bleeding resources from public schools?

When the proposed reorganization plan comes up for a vote before the school board, a majority should get on the program. The others should get out of the way.