L.A. Unified Plays Catch-Up

With the latest Academic Performance Index results, elementary school teachers and principals in the Los Angeles Unified School District finally have a reason to hold their heads up. Sadly, their high school colleagues are not part of this success, so a lost generation of badly educated teenagers stumbles toward adulthood.

Even in elementary schools, the scores missed the ultimate goal of 800 by a mile, but they were closer. More than two-thirds of L.A. Unified’s campuses qualified for API awards, which are based on improvement. The children at those schools might not be cheering all that loudly, though, because the cash-strapped state has suspended the awards. When California lawmakers set up the carrot-and-stick approach to encourage schools to improve, it appears they forgot to make sure they could afford the carrots. Talk about underperforming.

That doesn’t take away from the right to be proud of a job well done. L.A. Unified schools were much more likely to have hit their improvement targets than schools statewide, more than L.A. County schools as a whole, more than the wealthier neighboring counties of Orange and Ventura. Of the 30 elementary schools with the biggest API gains statewide, 12 are in L.A. Unified.

The congratulatory confetti, though, vanishes when it comes to older students. Only 11% of L.A. high schools merited the reneged-upon awards, a figure well below the state average. In other words, not only do L.A.’s teenagers have much further to go, they’re also falling further behind. This is dismal news when you consider that California high schoolers in general are not pulling up their scores like the younger kids.

The state’s explanations for the lower scores and lackluster improvement at California’s high schools make sense. Today’s teenagers didn’t have the 20-student classes in kindergarten through third grade. The state’s curriculum standards only recently came into the classroom; today’s teenagers are taking on tougher work without having done the prep work. High school scores should improve over the next several years, the Department of Education tells us. But that means nothing for the teenagers who’ve been left out of the success equation.

L.A. Unified deserves, and has gotten, plenty of criticism for promoting these kids for years without making sure they learned the basics. But at least the district is making a frantic last effort to make up for mistakes. Its new “Language!” remedial reading program returns teenagers to “the cat is on the mat,” this time making sure they master the lesson. California’s Department of Education needs to push such programs.

Even with all that catch-up, many students will be far behind. Their consolation prize: The state probably will hold off on the high school exit exam because so many fell short in early rounds. They can grab a diploma and go off woefully ill prepared for college or good jobs. At least they will be marginally literate.