Breaking Up the School District Won’t Make It Work Better Staying Whole

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Given the disappointments and controversies over the management of the Los Angeles Unified School District, many in the business community may be inclined to support the breakup of the district or may even have lost faith in our public schools.

Although these sentiments are understandable, it would be wise to reconsider either position. Everyone in the Los Angeles area particularly business has a huge stake in the health and welfare of our region’s largest school district.

Nothing is more critical to the long-term health of the local economy than the ability of companies to find well-educated employees. That requires a sound school system. Giving up is not a viable option. If anything, we need more active involvement from all “stakeholders” in the district from parents to CEOs to help turn our schools around. And it can be done.

Some assert that the LAUSD, with its $7 billion budget, is simply too big to manage. Try telling that to the leaders of AT & T;, Hewlett Packard, Daimler Chrysler and dozens of other large companies that have achieved outstanding results, while guiding organizations several times the size of the LAUSD. We should ask no less of the public schools.

Breakup not the answer

Despite calls by the Little Hoover Commission and others for breaking up the district into a dozen smaller pieces, the most practical solution lies in reengineering, not liquidating, the system. Breaking up the district into smaller entities with centralized LAUSD-style command-and-control management structures will simply produce a new set of bureaucratic fiefdoms just as deeply entrenched in the status quo as the bureaucracy they would replace. If the intent of a breakup is to make school management more responsive to the needs of their students, an even more systemic decentralization of the system is in order.

Ironically, the basic model for the successful restructuring already is in place. Its principles, introduced into the district by the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) in 1993, are similar to those employed successfully at well-run corporations throughout the world.

– Set overall goals, standards and measures of accountability at the top.

– Decentralize decision-making by shifting responsibility for budgeting, hiring and achieving academic results to principals and local school stakeholders.

– Allow competing choices for parents among schools within the district.

– Encourage greater participation by the community, including area businesses.

This formula has begun to work at LEARN schools in the LAUSD, which have outperformed non-LEARN schools and topped district-wide scores on student achievement tests. Moreover, LEARN schools have improved their own achievement levels in every subject area for the past two years.

Implementation is key

Why hasn’t this model produced even more sweeping results? The answer lies in the need for 100 percent commitment to its implementation from the top down.

Even progress made under LEARN in decentralizing the budgetary process has eroded under pressure from LAUSD’s previous management to regain control over discretionary funds. While ostensibly designed to pay for state-mandated programs, the move re-centralizes the school budgeting process, stripping individual schools of their authority to earmark funds to address their own needs such as textbooks, art instruction or tutoring programs.

Ramon Cortines, interim superintendent designee, and Howard Miller, the district’s chief operating officer, are to be commended for their recent decision to put the brakes on this re-centralization. And, our newly elected school board should be applauded for appointing a task force to focus on fixing the problem.

But much remains to be done. The new leadership should consider the following steps:

– Find a new superintendent with a demonstrated management capacity to reengineer and run an effective decentralized operation;

– Restructure the district based on more autonomous campus-based operating units;

– Provide principals with the flexibility, resources and responsibility to accomplish district goals of improving student achievement;

– Flatten the district’s management structure and redirect those resources to the campuses;

– Initiate a student-focused culture within the district administration just as any business requires a customer-focused culture to succeed.

To be sure, the Los Angeles School Board and its new management team face a monumental challenge. Nothing less than a major structural overhaul and a tectonic shift in its organizational culture will move the district from its current chaotic state to a responsive educational enterprise.

The business community can throw up its collective hands and hope that the system will straighten itself out. But we would be far better served by redoubling our efforts by getting involved in a local school or one of the reform groups and helping to turn our schools into an asset.

William G. Ouchi is chairman of LEARN and a professor at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.

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