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A Bold Reform for L.A. Schools

The most significant school reform in the country may be happening right here in Los Angeles. On Tuesday the Los Angeles Unifed School District Board will vote on recommendations for new school operators for 12 underperforming schools and 24 new schools. From 219 letters of intent to 84 submitted proposals, Superintendent Ramon Cortines is recommending seven charter organizations, three external school development organizations and 31 school-based and local-district-based teams. The selected teams will operate the schools and be considered for renewal every five years.

Nowhere else in the country is a process like this taking place.

"The Los Angeles Unified School District is testing the hypothesis that allowing a bunch of people to compete for running schools will yield better ones. It's a starkly different idea than the traditional civil service model and probably the boldest experiment taking place in public education in America," wrote Charles Kerchner, research professor of education at Claremont Graduate University, on The Huffington Post recently.

In the next few years, an additional 32 new school buildings and up to 200 underperforming schools will be put out to bid under the Public School Choice (PSC) process. In addition, Superintendent Cortines is acting, under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law provisions, to take over chronically underperforming schools and restructure them, as he demonstrated in December when he announced the District was taking over Fremont High School.

We applaud the LAUSD School Board and its many collaborators including the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, League of Woman Voters and many others for their roles in making this resolution happen with both urgency and inclusiveness.

Superintendent Cortines should be applauded for the public and transparent process that he has managed, which included letters of intent, applications, community reviews, community votes, initial review panels and Superintendent's panel team review. All of these items were posted on the LAUSD Web site, and included weekly updates from the Superintendent.

All of this transforms the role of the school district from being the sole bureaucratic operator of schools to that of a contract manager, monitoring the achievement of schools and awarding contracts to the best school operators, both inside and outside the system.

The PSC process not only provided a pathway for independent charter operators to work with the district, it also inspired many school-based and local-district-based teacher and community teams to put forward their best ideas and plans. There were, however, five plans for underperforming schools that the Superintendent found deficient and approved only with reservations. These teams are required to revise their plans and re-submit them by the end of March. If these plans are not improved, Superintendent Cortines will intervene using the NCLB provisions.

This bold experiment in public school operation merits the support of all citizens in Los Angeles. Last week the Chamber joined the district, the school board, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the L.A. City Council, Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), United Way of Greater Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and 11 institutions of higher education to launch the L.A. Compact, an unprecedented commitment by L.A.'s major institutions to see positive change in our local public schools. Among our commitments is supporting the school teams in the PSC process through planning and effective implementation. One of the L.A. Compact's first initiatives was the creation of the Los Angles School Development Institute (LASDI), co-led by United Teachers Los Angeles, AALA, and LAUSD, which helped school-based and local-district teams develop their plans in the Public School Choice process. I will be writing more about the L.A. Compact in a forthcoming Business Perspective.

The Chamber calls upon all Angelenos to support the new operators of LAUSD schools — charters, external operators and school-based and local-district-based teams — and support the bold reform in L.A. schools.

And that's The Business Perspective.