LAUSD Is Ready to Meet the Challenge

This week, the state of California announced that more than 500 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District are not measuring up to the state’s new academic achievement standards. Let me say that the scores come as no surprise to either the LAUSD’s board or to me. They reflect fundamental problems with the whole school system, problems that we are going to fix.

In the months that I have been working for the board as an advisor to former Supt. Ruben Zacarias and as the interim superintendent, I have seen a number of schools that have taken on significant challenges: severe overcrowding, a lack of adequate materials and a large number of students who enter school not speaking English fluently. Yet these schools are providing a quality education to students. Such successes need to be recognized.

However, I also have spoken with hundreds of citizens, students and employees of the school system who are passionate about improving our schools. Based on these conversations, I see a need to do three things:

* Give local communities more control over their schools. In my experience as a superintendent, decisions that get made locally tend to be better decisions. In the LAUSD, too much authority now resides in the central office. Because of that, I am proposing a multiple-district plan that splits the LAUSD into 11 districts, each with its own superintendent with the authority, responsibility and resources to make critical decisions about staffing, curriculum, school accountability and budgets.

Decentralization has been tried in Los Angeles before. This plan is different in several major respects. We are going to hand over most of the budget to the 11 districts, and we are going to set up explicit authority and accountability for district superintendents and principals. Each school and district will develop a plan outlining how resources will be used to improve student achievement. Those plans will form the basis for formal evaluations of principals and district superintendents.

* Change the structure of the central office so that it is small, lean and focused on tactical support to schools. I was asked to “slim the bloated Hill,” and I am doing that. Numerous existing central office personnel will leave the downtown offices and be transferred to schools and district offices, where they can be of better service. Those who remain will no longer give “top-down” edicts to schools or be the final arbiters of decisions that can be made sensibly by appropriate school staff, principals and district administrators. Instead, they will concentrate on being problem-solvers for the people on the front lines who need their help.

* Focus our time and energy on improving academic achievement, beginning with reading. Organizational change in and of itself will not improve academic achievement. What it can do is target our resources and our efforts on specific priorities. Right now, our No. 1 priority must be improving reading achievement.

I have asked the instructional office to put in place a comprehensive reading initiative to ensure that reading is a priority for children and young people throughout their schooling. Reading is fundamental to learning at all levels, so we can’t stop paying attention to literacy at Grade 4 or Grade 6 or Grade 9. Students must not only learn to read but also must read to learn throughout their lives.

These are the actions that the board and I are undertaking right now. When they are in place, we will set the district and the 711,000 children served by it on a path to success.

We already have in place excellent standards for what students should know and be able to do in a variety of academic disciplines. These standards are a solid foundation on which to build an effective and accountable educational system. Now we need to take the next steps toward making the system work for students, parents and communities.