Give Principals More Authority, Greater Accountability
#16 SCHOOL REFORM
Los Angeles, burdened by what many believe is arguably the nation’s worst public school system, is at a crossroads.
Leaving the public education system as is virtually assures that a growing segment of society will be stuck at the lowest rung. The increasing numbers of Los Angeles Unified School District students who speak English as a second language struggle to learn a new tongue (and are often unable to seek help at home), while the education of native English speakers is slowed as teachers try to reach students struggling to keep up.
Part of the problem is the bureaucratic model of the LAUSD, which has long outlived its effectiveness.
To its credit, the district has launched an ambitious and badly needed school building program (enrollment has grown by 180,000 students in the last quarter century, during which 15 new schools encompassing 20,000 seats were built). But billions spent on facilities addresses only part of the problem.
Fewer than half the district’s 75,000 employees are teachers and only 35 percent of its budget is spent on teacher pay. This begins a cycle in which low teacher salaries make retaining experienced staff difficult at best; more than one in four teachers lack full credentials.
Cramped quarters and short teaching staff have forced the district to bus students to distant campuses and implement a year-round school schedule that has 17 fewer days of instruction.
The results are painfully demonstrated in student performance. While elementary school children have made some gains, only 23 percent of high school students meet or exceed the national average in reading; for math, the figure is 34 percent.
Recent efforts at an overhaul, such as the creation of 11 sub-districts to help decentralize operations, have proven ineffective, and last week’s vote to reduce their number won’t change that. The situation has become so grave that the teachers union in May asked that the decentralization system be dismantled.
Fortunately, the bones of an effective system are already in place. What is needed is the foresight to take a new approach to making the best use of these existing tools.
To that end, LAUSD needs to go further in embracing a more decentralized, corporate structure.
Rather than dismantle its decentralization plan, the district needs to hand over more power to sub-districts, giving principals additional control over their budgets. And at the same time, principals should be held more accountable for their school’s results.
Treating principals in a manner akin to the vice presidents of a conglomerate’s operating divisions is an idea first floated by UCLA professor William G. Ouchi a close advisor to State Secretary for Education Richard Riordan.
The model Ouchi advocates, and which makes the greatest sense for the far-flung LAUSD, would treat schools as “branches” whose principals would be accountable to a division executive reporting directly to the “chief executive,” the superintendent.
Such a system would disperse decision-making throughout the “supply chain,” creating more accountability for those on the ground and alleviating centralized management from the daunting task of micro-managing the district.
“Decisions made at the top of a large bureaucracy will suffer from the absence of detailed information about local conditions at each site, will be slow to cope with any unusual situations, and will tend to enforce standardized procedures on every situation, no matter how poorly those procedures may fit the situation,” Ouchi has written.
Similar conditions were faced by public school systems in Seattle and Houston, which responded with overhauls that tied funding to the student population. A native English-speaking student, for instance, may generate $2,700 in funding for a school while a non-English speaking student with multiple learning disabilities may carry funding worth $24,000.
Principals not only have discretion over the funds, but are empowered to improve their schools and compete for students. If a school’s scores do not rise, parents should be free to remove the administration and find someone who can achieve.
Let the free market encourage principals to compete for customers (students) by delivering the best product (education) they can. Level the playing field by allocating funds on an equitable basis and let the various participants compete to provide the best education and then reward such successes.
SCHOOL REFORM
Proposal: Budget control, more accountability for principals
Obstacles: Teachers’ unions,
opposition from LAUSD bureaucrats
Cost: Variable. If done voluntarily
by district, could be minimal to tens
of thousands of dollars. If by voter
initiative, campaign alone could
require more than $1 million.
Time Frame: Between one and five years
CORRECTION: The story above inaccurately reported the proportion of teacher salaries in the budget of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The district is spending 46 percent of its $6.8 billion 2004-2005 budget on teacher pay.
