LAUSD versus the Mayor

I have been invited by the Alliance for School Choice to write an opinion piece on the battle over control of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The Alliance is dedicated to improving K-12 education by providing options such as school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and public charter schools. If my article is accepted it will be published in edspresso, the blogosphere arm of the Alliance.

If you live outside of California or have been hiding your head in a pile of books (a good thing) I should explain that the new-ish mayor of Los Angeles, the Honorable Antonio Villaraigosa, is attempting a hostile takeover of the LAUSD. In this fight AV is joined by other mayors of the cities served by the school district and he is opposed by the school board and the teacher’s union.

Since my own children are grown up and they attended parochial schools in the East, I have little detailed knowledge of the California public school system. (But I have heard things!) Thus I needed to do some research. I found a splendid web site called School Matters, operated by Standard & Poor, that provides detailed information on every school and school district in the country. Instead of giving a long list of statistics about LAUSD without any context, it will be more informative to compare LA to the district where I live, Palos Verdes, and to the state as a whole.

Most of my friends in Palos Verdes have children who are in or have graduated from the schools here. They include parochial, private and public schools, and the general opinion is that these schools are uniformly good. I have some personal experience with the teachers, administrators and PTAs and have found them to be universally dedicated to educational excellence. I have heard that the schools are not as uniformly good in Los Angeles.

The following table lists important demographic, financial and educational performance statistics for the three public school cases studied.


-------------------Palos Verdes---Los Angeles----California
Students------------11,800----------741,000--------6,400,000
Spending ppupil----$6740------------$8570---------$7550
Classroom ppupil---$4390------------$4980---------$4590
Econ Disadvant------2%---------------75%------------48%
English Learners-----6%---------------44%------------25%
Ethnic major-----White 65%----Hispanic 73%---Hispanic 45%
English Proficiency---83%------------32%------------45%
Math Proficiency-----85%------------38%------------48%

The data are quite revealing. In terms of demographics, LAUSD is huge, largely Hispanic, with a high percentage of English learners, and economically disadvantaged compared to Palos Verdes and even compared to the state.

In terms of school spending, the per-pupil operating expenses are lowest in Palos Verdes and highest in Los Angeles. LAUSD spends 13% more than the state and 27% more than Palos Verdes. Note, however, that LA spends only 58% of the operating dollars on classroom instruction compared to 64% in Palos Verdes. The Alliance for School Choice is promoting a Sixty-five Percent Solution.

The difference in performance is stark. In Palos Verdes, 83%/85% of students are performing at grade level. In Los Angeles it is 32%/38%, well below the state averages of 45%/48%. The high school dropout rate in Los Angeles is 50%. There is no denying that the schools in Los Angeles (and statewide) are largely failing. The question is what to do about it. Since the spending is already substantial (for such abysmal results), is it realistic to think that spending even more is the solution? Will mayoral takeover solve the problems?

Clearly the high rate of English learners in LA is a huge hurdle to overcome. The answer, of course, is English immersion at the earliest age and religious-like dedication to the basics, particularly English and math. There are other impediments too and the Public Agenda 2006 Reality Check national survey of students, parents and teachers points to some of the problems. High dropout rates, kids promoted without learning, profanity and disrespect for teachers, fighting, drug and alcohol abuse are "very serious" problems in schools, according to large numbers of the nation's black and Hispanic students. So who is responsible?

It is revealing that four in 10 black parents say they feel a teacher has unfairly punished their child. When I was in school, I was happy to be unfairly punished by a teacher as long as my father didn’t hear about it, or there would be hell to pay at home. The parents must demand discipline and must support the teachers if education is going to work.

Teachers, meanwhile, are troubled by parents who don’t hold their children accountable or control TV and video game time. Again this falls on the parents. If kids are not doing enough homework, if they are skipping classes or disrupting class, it is the parent's fault, and no amount of money or teacher dedication is going to fix it.

What about a change at the top? Some folks wonder: How could it be any worse than it is? I must admit that the LA district needs to be taken by the collar and seriously shaken, but is the mayor the one to do it? I spoke with a friend who serves on the LA School Board who was worried about (1) school funds being lost to City projects, (2) conflict of interest over new school sites that are desired by private developers who contribute to political parties and (3) management churn that occurs whenever the City government changes. Those seem to be valid issues, but none get to the heart of the student performance problem. And neither does anything I have heard from the Villaraigosa side.

I fall back on the basics. What works in every other area of life ought to work in K-12 education and that is freedom. One size does not fit all in hats or in education. Parents ought to have the right to choose the school and the curriculum they want for their children. English learners need a different kind of focus than kids who already know how to read when they get to kindergarten. Some kids will thrive in a professional career and need advanced math and science or language arts, while some kids would be better off and happier pursuing a trade. Some kids need a school where discipline is the foremost priority. (My Jesuit high school would suit them well.) These different kids should be in schools optimized for their needs.

For these reasons, and many more, I believe that school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and public charter schools are the keys to the education vault. Expanded parental choice in education has led to the creation of more than 3,600 charter schools that educate more than a million students and offer some of the most innovative instructional models in the country. Vouchers or tax credits will expand this academic freedom to the private sector; then watch the American students take off like a rocket.