Debate education policy, not race

SCHOOLS ARE ALWAYS a contentious issue. Parents want the best for their kids, while educators face challenges as diverse as tight budgets and kids with wildly varying skill levels. Solutions are in short supply, and in L.A. as elsewhere, accusations invariably fly back and forth between the stakeholders.

Angelenos can now expect another pitched battle as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa begins his effort to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District and its multibillion-dollar budget and bureaucracy. Test scores, dropout rates, the rights of teachers, the needs of immigrant students, the power of administrators -- these are all potent issues that must be discussed in the months ahead.

What ought not enter the debate are allegations that the school district and its officials care less about minority children than they do about white kids. A debate that injects allegations of ethnic bias into the mix will quickly devolve into charges and countercharges that ultimately can’t be proven while the essential point of the debate -- how to ensure that all kids achieve as much as they possibly can -- will be lost.

That’s why it was particularly distressing to hear Villaraigosa’s speech last weekend to about 400 parents at a local charter school. In it, the mayor implied that the district doesn’t much care about the future of its Latino students or think very highly of their potential.

He proclaimed to the parents: “I will rescue your children from a public school system mired in complacency.” Then he went on: “I’m tired of those who would say ‘pobrecito.’ You know, ‘Oh, they can’t learn English, they can’t graduate from high school, they can’t go on to college, they can’t go on to City Hall and be the mayor of Los Angeles.’ ‘Cause that’s what they said to me and people like me a generation ago, and we’re here today to say ‘Ya basta!’ Enough is enough.”

The mayor’s charge is not totally off-base -- but not in the way he thinks. Today, low expectations don’t come from the kind of dismissive bigots who were around when he was an L.A. Unified student 40 years ago.

Today, long after Brown vs. Board of Education and 30 years after school busing was first ordered in Los Angeles -- and by virtue of court orders, the No Child Left Behind Act and demographic changes -- the district is necessarily invested in the success of all its students. After all, 70% of the students in L.A. public schools are Latino, as are about 29% of teachers and 26% of administrators. Two of the last four superintendents have been Latino. The idea that the district is unconcerned about the success of nonwhite children is ludicrous.

There still is a rhetoric of underachievement, but today it comes from those who believe that they are helping Latino and other minority students. It comes from well-intentioned liberals who regularly lower the goals set for public school students. For instance, state leaders such as Assembly members Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) and Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) have sought to eviscerate the state’s high school exit exam requirement because they believe that minorities can’t cut it. They unabashedly claim that minorities won’t perform well on a high school exit exam that already tests for only junior high school skill levels, that can be retaken six times and that requires only 60% and 55% correct answers (depending on the section of the exam) to pass.

African Americans and Latinos do pass at lower rates, but the answer is not to deny that an educational achievement gap exists, but to address it. The soft bigotry of low expectations that the mayor rightfully attacks argues that these kids can never make it so we should eliminate the source of the bad news. But that solves nothing.

The district may not be sure of the best methods to achieve success for its students -- large districts seem to be forever tinkering with the curriculum, the size of schools and “areas,” the ratio of administrators to students, the role of parents, etc. -- and it may be ham-handed in how it deals with many of its constituent groups. It may seem mired in political infighting. Nevertheless, the impending debate will be far more open, honest and fruitful if we all concede that the vast majority of the players in this drama are motivated, at a minimum, by a shared goal of wanting the kids in L.A. to succeed and reach their full potential. They may have very conflicting agendas after that, but they are in the education field, for the most part, because they care about kids.

There are no easy answers, no quick fixes, no rabbits that Villaraigosa or anyone else can pull out of a hat. But no one should seek easy scapegoats or invoke ethnic boogeymen when the going gets tough -- as it surely will.