The Business Journal solicited these commentaries on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to take control of L.A.’s schools.
As mayor, I spent the better part of my second term battling the bureaucracy and fighting for change in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and I know personally what a difficult challenge Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has taken on in his movement for school reform.
So, I have a simple message for Angelenos:
This is a fight we need to win.
We all have a major stake in reform, and we all have a responsibility to join this campaign for change.
The mayor has already demonstrated uncommon political courage on the issue of education reform. He understands that powerful interests are arrayed against him, and he’s even been willing to challenge his own friends and allies in this debate.
I believe he’s done so because he understands that LA’s economic future depends on giving more of our young people a meaningful shot at a better life.
Most of all, he sees that our schools are failing utterly to build our workforce and deliver for our kids.
Right now, only half of our district’s students are graduating on time. An appalling 87 percent of LAUSD kids are below proficiency. Over 80 percent of middle school students are enrolled in failing schools. Meanwhile, the district’s public relations machine is consumed in a ridiculous spin campaign designed to discredit a Harvard University study documenting the district’s woeful graduation rates (the official number, they say, is closer to one-third). In short, instead of answering the mayor’s call to reform, district officials are busy parsing the subtle shades of difference between the awful and the terrible.
With Mayor Villaraigosa’s leadership, we have an opportunity to bring about fundamental change in our schools. The mayor will be making his plan public in the coming months. I believe that it should be guided by these principles:
-We need to make our schools more accountable to the community by giving the superintendent greater management oversight.
-We need to change the funding equation and move resources from the downtown bureaucracy to the classroom.
-We need to find ways reward teachers and raise respect for the profession of teaching.
-We need to abandon the one-size-fits-all approach, give educators the freedom to spur innovation, and provide parents and children with more meaningful choices in our public schools.
-We need to ask parents for greater personal involvement, and we need to give them a greater say in how their children’s schools are run.
-We need to equip our principals with best practices, and we need to vest them with the power to implement them.
-We need to better coordinate city and district resources to guarantee that our school campuses are free from gang activity and
violence.
-We need to greatly expand the availability of after school programs.
-We need accountability up and down the line-from the mayor to the superintendent, to the principal, to the teachers, to the parents and most of all from the students.
No American city has successfully reformed its schools without the active support and engagement of its business and civic leadership. Let’s join the mayor in this historic campaign for change.
*Richard J. Riordan, of counsel with the law firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP, is former mayor of Los Angeles and former California Secretary for Education.
