Editorial: Supt. Michelle King’s strategic plan for LAUSD is chock-full of edu-speak, but short on specifics

It’s hard to imagine how a strategic plan for the nation’s second-largest school district could be much more uninspiring than the one presented by Supt. Michelle King. In fact, the blueprint for Los Angeles Unified she has offered left the school board so unimpressed that it is unclear whether the members will even bother to reject it at their meeting Tuesday. They may just ignore it entirely.

In the latest version, King added the big-mission goal that board members had requested after seeing an earlier draft — a 100% graduation rate. In fact, she added it so many times that it’s the banner headline on every other page of the 24-page document. But that ambitious-sounding objective doesn’t mean a thing in reality because there’s no date set for achieving it and no specific strategy laid out for getting there.

The plan is chock-full of edu-speak commitments like “Empower stakeholders as equal partners in decision-making and action” and “Deliver quality instruction through mastery of the California content standards and frameworks to improve student outcomes.” And while it lists some specific, measurable ambitions for improvement, it bizarrely calls in almost all cases for an increase of two percentage points a year for the next couple of years — which makes one wonder how much thought was given to those. Aren’t there some areas where bigger ambitions are called for, and others where they might be tougher to meet?

At a meeting last week, the board was mostly ho-hum about the report, though it appeared to be giving King tacit freedom to go forward on her own, without signing on and making a commitment of its own. That would be pretty cowardly; the board should be in agreement with King about the direction of the district and if it is not, it should help her move in a different direction. The board cannot duck responsibility for what happens on its watch.

The report is at its best when it lays out achievable plans, such as a marked increase in the number of magnet schools and dual-immersion language programs. These have been popular with parents — thus keeping more students from leaving the district — and represent many of L.A. Unified’s biggest academic successes. Unfortunately, such specifics are rarities in a document that mostly speaks in vague terms about improved teacher training, parent involvement and the like.

A lot of effort was expended on a document that’s supposed to take the district just a couple of years into the future — to 2019. But while King has produced a serviceable and comprehensive summary of what needs to improve in L.A. Unified, what she doesn’t have yet is a strategic plan.

What happens tomorrow? And next month? A true blueprint would allow a newcomer to step in and know what’s next on the agenda. King says she’ll produce that plan, but time is short; the district is almost halfway through the first year of this unimpressive three-year plan.

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