For your discussion pleasure - what should be done with the LAUSD. You've got a liberal mayor, fighting liberal unions and an entrenched liberal school board.

Sounds like a recipe for progressive change doesn't it? I think not. Instead of writing statewide bond measures, maybe guys like Rob Reiner should run for the school board..

Click below to read the editorial from the WSJ - post your comments below!

Tim

L.A. Story
June 19, 2006; Page A14

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is a Democrat with impeccable liberal credentials who wants to fix his city's dreadful public schools. He has one big problem: He's meeting fierce resistance from the liberal Democrats who run the teachers unions, dominate the school board and control the state legislature.

That the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country's second-largest after New York, faces a crisis is hard to dispute. Some 81% of the district's middle school kids attend failing schools, which might be one reason that one in three eventually drops out. L.A. schools superintendent (and former Democratic Colorado Governor) Roy Romer dutifully notes that elementary math and reading scores have risen in recent years. But the fact remains that only 13% of students are reading at grade level, and 11% are at grade level in math. The only word for such results is horrifying.

Among minority students in the district, who comprise the vast majority, the situation is even worse. Last year, nine out of 10 black and Latino fourth-graders scored below proficiency in reading and math. Eighth-graders fared worse. Just 8% of black eighth-graders are proficient readers, and 7% are proficient at math. For eighth-grade Latinos, the numbers are 9% and 6%, respectively.

You might think that a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city would garner plenty of establishment support for fixing a system so poorly serving members of a traditional Democratic constituency. Think again. In April, Mr. Villaraigosa announced a school reform plan that calls for "more mayoral oversight for the purpose of ensuring accountability." His proposal has met nothing but denunciation from his fellow liberals.

Currently, public education in L.A. is controlled by an elected seven-member school board, which not only appoints the superintendent but also holds sway over everything from teachers contracts and budgets to curriculum, collective bargaining and the hiring and firing of principals. Under Mr. Villaraigosa's proposal, these core duties would be turned over to the superintendent, who would answer primarily to the mayor.

This is unacceptable to the United Teachers of Los Angeles, the local union that currently controls the school board by fielding candidates and financing what are low-turnout elections. The status quo is great for union power; it just doesn't do much for kids. But then again the unions long-ago put their own clout above education quality.

Mr. Villaraigosa also faces opposition in Sacramento, where the state legislature must ultimately approve any Los Angeles Unified reorganization. His opponents there are lawmakers who carry water for the California Teachers Association, the state teachers union, which is as fearful of these reforms as its local affiliate in L.A. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Assembly Education Committee Chairwoman Jackie Goldberg "called mayoral control undemocratic and an oversimplification that would not fix the district's fundamental problem: its lack of money."

Never mind that the National Center for Education Statistics puts per-pupil spending in the district at more than $10,000, which is above both the state average of $8,700 and the national average of $9,300. Or that California teachers enjoy the best pay packages in the U.S. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supports mayoral control, submitted a budget proposal this year that would amount to more than $11,000 for each K-12 student in the state. But if the Governor thinks the CTA, which savaged him in last year's special election, can be appeased monetarily, the Jackie Goldbergs of the state legislature should be a wake-up call.

As for Mr. Villaraigosa, it doesn't matter that he's a progressive Democrat, married to a public school teacher and himself a product of the labor movement who's fought on behalf of teachers unions. And it doesn't seem to matter that the top-down approach he's put forward has met with some success in other large urban school districts -- such as New York, Chicago, Denver, Boston and Philadelphia -- where it's been promoted largely by reform-minded Democrats over the strenuous objections of Democratic interest groups.

Mayoral control alone won't cure all that ails Los Angeles public schools, and Mr. Villaraigosa isn't arguing that it will. But introducing more accountability to a system that's failing children as badly as L.A.'s is a good place to start. And the fact that the liberal political establishment would fight one of its own to defend a status quo that is producing such atrocious results makes you wonder whether there's any education reform instinct left in the Democratic Party.