ISSUE 1 VOLUME 1 2005

The Claremont

Examining current issues in education highlighting the ongoing work of the faculty of the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Letter

This issue of the Claremont Education Letter focuses on education reform in Los Angeles and its lessons for all of us.

Educational Reform by Charles Kerchner institution of public education. In the eyes of most reformers, Everybody knows what LAUSD and other big school districts happened to educational reform in are insular worlds unto themselves, the Los Angeles Unified School impenetrable and unchanging. But District. As former mayor Richard after two years of studying LEARN Riordan once told me, “That’s and the Los Angeles Annenberg simple; LEARN failed.” Indeed, Metropolitan Project (LAAMP), my the Los Angeles Educational colleagues and I concluded that the Alliance for Reform Now, which in district was far from self-contained. It the 1990s created a massive civic had become dependent on outsiders reform coalition, fell far short of for many of its resources, much of its building a district of semi- operating capacity, and increasingly autonomous schools. When for its policies. Federal and state looked at as a project, it is easy to governments, the courts, the unions, come to the conclusion that reform and society’s changing ideas and saw an LAUSD altered in ways that failed. Our research leads us to a norms about a good education challenged virtually every traditional different conclusion: that LEARN created a school system that was assumption about how to govern and and other reforms were part of a reactive to outside forces rather than organize public education. much larger change in the entire generative of its own change. Most common assumptions about Looking at 40 years of history, we public schools are rooted in the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century. School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University

For more than 75 years, the School of Educational Studies (SES) at Claremont Graduate University (CGU) has been a leader in providing graduate education. Many of our more than 5,700 alumni have held positions as college presidents, superintendents, principals, award-winning teachers, and tenured professors at colleges and universities around the world. Progressivism swept the nation, the 1950s it was considered a shining without creating the infrastructure for establishing superintendents as in- example of public education, as were new. charge professionals, rather than many large urban districts. But Sixth, someone writes an instruction political appointees. Most school beginning with a desegregation lawsuit book about how to operate in the new districts were given control of their own filed in 1963, the LAUSD was pictured environment. Thomas Kuhn, who finances, and school boards were as racially prejudiced, and increasingly wrote about paradigm shifts in science, separated from city governments, as educationally incompetent. As time noted that one of the ways that one which were looked upon as went on, everyone associated with the could tell that new ideas had come to instruments of corruption and district was tarred with the brush of the forefront was that texts would be patronage. Pedagogy was freed from failure. Unions were seen as greedy, built around them. People would go to rote learning, and urban school administrators as hapless, and the school to learn how to operate within districts in particular developed school board as self-interested and the new environment. LAAMP and courses based on inquiry and problem micro-managing. Reputationally, LEARN tried to do this. They spent a solving. Los Angeles became a prime LAUSD and the rest of California went large percentage of their budgets on example. As historian Judith Raftery “from first to worst,” as television professional education, but their ideas wrote, “By the mid-1920s journalist John Merrow put it. were never deeply accepted. administrative Progressives in Los Second, an exit strategy allowed the Angeles had succeeded in remaking institution’s most articulate watch-dogs Improvisation their school district on the model of the to no longer be dependent on it. So why does recognizing scientifically managed corporation.” Suburbanization, white-and-middle- institutional change matter, and what The last 40 years illustrate the class flight, magnet schools, and later should policy makers and practitioners abandonment of these ideas. David charter schools made it possible for the do about it? Menefee-Libey (Pomona College, dissatisfied to leave. By the turn of the Finding one’s self in the midst of professor of politics), Stephanie century, working class families were large-scale institutional change is very Clayton, (CGU history M.A.), and I, adopting the exit strategy that had disorienting: a bit like participating in found LAUSD had undergone a series formerly been used by the wealthier. improvisational theater. One reform of system shocks that drastically Third, the district’s capacity was idea after another is advocated with decreased its ability to chart its own hollowed out. Tax revolts, great certainty and then falls short. course and that increased adverse unionization, an activist state external scrutiny. These system government, and the dictates of federal ENGAGEMENT shocks set off a process of institutional legislation caused the district to lose change, of which the 1990s reforms control of its own finances, part of its were part. personnel decisions, and its curriculum The institution of public education and pedagogy, raising the question of SOCIAL JUSTICE includes schools and districts, to be whether anyone was in charge. sure, and it also spreads over several Fourth, the district initiated its own levels of governance and interest reform plans, in part to save itself from ACCOUNTABILITY groups including employee unions and breakup and to stave off vouchers. advocacy organizations. The Proposals to decentralize the district California Department of Education, can be traced to the 1960s. Beginning Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Bush, in the 1980s district task forces the NEA, the PTA, McGraw-Hill, and proposed radical shifts in organization the Learning Disabilities Association and governance. These changes were are all part of it, as are hundreds of not unlike the LAAMP and LEARN other persons and organizations. reforms in the 1990s. Institutions change infrequently and Fifth, a crisis occurs. There has not often during a crisis where it is believed yet been a defining crisis that allows that the existing institution is incapable new ideas about how public education of delivering what is expected of it. should be governed and operated to “The faculty of the school When a crisis occurs, a window of gain sufficient political power to replace of educational studies political opportunity opens for those the old institution. Despite the many believes a socially just with different ideas about the institution declarations of crisis in public nation educates all its to take control. education over the last 20 years, there diverse citizenry through We think public education is in the has been no crisis so evident, or networks of effective and midst of institutional change, that it alternative so glowing, that the polity accountable organizations takes place in six steps, and that we will form a new institution. Most that interact responsibly can see it happening in LAUSD. current voucher and charter school with families and First, the reputation and legitimacy ideas, though radical in intent, are communities…” of the district was challenged. Through destructive of the existing institution -From our mission statement Public attention then moves to the next

Creating The Boyle Heights Learning Collaborative reform, and observers reach the Over the last four years I have been privileged to follow the efforts of conclusion that reform doesn’t amount to educators, community organizations, parents and others in forming an much. As one school reformer said, educational advocacy organization in the Boyle Heights neighborhood, just there’s “lots of singing that doesn’t add east of downtown Los Angeles. As the project’s evaluator, a number of CGU up to an opera.” However, just as students, faculty, and I have been chronicling its progress. improvisational theater auditions new Boyle Heights is a fabled neighborhood, home to immigrants for more than talent, improvisational school reform a century. A string of luminaries claim Boyle Heights as home, including Los auditions new ideas. The challenge for Angeles’ new mayor, Antonio Villaraigrosa, the first Latino to hold that shrewd policy makers and practitioners position in a century, and Harold Williams, who was later to be the president is to better understand their own of the Getty Museum. Luis Rodriquez wrote about it in Always Running: La histories and to create organizational Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., and it served as the setting for the excellent order out of institutional chaos. new play Electricidad—a Spanglish rendition of Sophocles’ Electra. Over 40 years in LAUSD we found Though rich in history, Boyle Heights remains economically poor and four reoccurring reform ideas. If one subject to gang violence. Despite recent substantial gains, school were to build around them, a new achievement is low. Its many community-based organizations have not institution of public education would be coalesced. Even the promise of prosperity—propelled by a mass transit line born: and new housing construction—tears the fabric of the community more than it First: decentralization. A constant knits it. The hope of the Boyle Heights Learning Collaborative (BHLC) is to reform theme in Los Angeles has been form a triangle of school improvement, grass roots organizing, and to find ways to give autonomy to community organizations focused on education and community literacy. The individual schools, or groups of schools. original grant from the Annenberg Foundation is in its last year, and the While none of these decentralization collaborative is establishing itself as an independent non-profit. efforts has lasted, the idea of There are great advantages of evaluating a project from its beginnings, decentralization has reappeared in every rather than conducting a post-mortem. One experiences the drama and reform program or challenge to the uncertainty of organization building. People come and go. They get sick. existing regime. It was present in school They get angry. But somehow work gets done. There is wisdom in board elections in the 1960s and in the understanding that organization building is not tidy. 1970 teachers’ strike, which brought We have followed the work using fieldwork techniques: videotaping, photo United Teachers of Los Angeles from a documentation, observation, interviews, and an occasional survey. We are gadfly union to a powerful advocate. It beginning to put what we know on paper. Some highlights: was present in the district’s own plans • The Society of Students, a youth development and resilience program, during the 1980s, and it was present in born of one teacher’s vision, has now spread to several schools. SOS is the LEARN and LAAMP reforms of the gaining a national presence and was the subject of a report on the 1990s. Newshour with Jim Lehrer. (View the video at http://www.pbs.org. Click Second: grassroots participation and on “Catch up on Past Stories,” then “Society of Students.”) accountability. There have been • Transition Teams. BHLC and the school district have created a continuing pressures for a community curriculum and a summer school program to help students and parents voice at the table and for involving successfully move from elementary to secondary schools. parents as children’s first educators. • Feria del Libro. A book fair held annually at Roosevelt High School as a These violate the older tradition of Latino counterpart to a similar venture held on the city’s affluent west side. schools governed by a community elite When it was started, the organizers thought that perhaps 1,000 people and deference to professionals in all would show up; this year 15,000 attended. matters educational. Reform • Smart school. Breed Street Elementary School, the seat of the grant, is experiments with community-based turning itself into an authentic learning organization, where leadership schools show that substantive parent roles are distributed, where time is created in the schedule for examining involvement is possible, but only a few data and collaboration on lesson planning. schools have been restructured around • The collaborative itself, which differs from most education support this principle. organizations. BHLC brings together people and organizations that have Third: standards. Virtually every not historically worked with one another, even those who exhibit historic reform idea in the last 20 years has mistrust, such as parents and the Los Angeles Police Department. replaced attention to aptitude with high • Parent organizing. Parents are learning the importance of schooling, how expectations for most all students. best to help their children succeed in school, and how to band together for Aptitude education follows a bell curve; political action. only some students are thought capable of high achievement. Beginning in the CGU doctoral student Laura Mulfinger is the co-research director of the 1980s, California began to adopt evaluation. Recent graduates Michelle Tellez, June Hilton, DeLacy Ganley, Alejandra Favela, Sara Exposito, Weijiang Zhang and several other students standards, and incrementally it adopted have also been a part of the research team along with faculty members William testing and accountability measures that Perez and David Drew. were linked to those standards. The record, we were left with profound ideal of high standards for all creates feelings about the inequity of power political pressure for reaching them and responsibility. Responsibility has and more than a little nudge from the flowed down toward teachers, federal government to reach them principals and superintendents. Power quickly. has become more centralized in the Fourth: choice. Beginning with the hands of governors, teacher unions, struggle to integrate in the 1960s, educational officials, and politicians. various forms of choice began to The usual Monday morning reaction involve a significant number of to this state of affairs is caffeine and students in the district. Students— commiseration. A better one would be mostly African Americans—were bused thinking beyond compliance. I think from their neighborhoods to relieve every large school district would be overcrowding in the central city, help well-served by hiring a person whose Claremont Graduate University boost attendance in the San Fernando job it is to understand all its external Valley, and to somewhat achieve racial mandates and sources of funds and to CGU is a member of the Claremont balance. Students also chose magnet help the board and superintendent use Consortium of seven institutions of schools based on the specialties these forces to push their organization higher education (Pomona College, offered or on the way the school was where it wants to go. Harvey Mudd College, Claremont organized. As charter schools began This, of course, requires that a McKenna College, Scripps College, in the 1990s, they became viable district actually have long-term Pitzer College, and Keck Graduate alternatives to conventional public direction and goals. While I am not a Institute). It is an independent schools. Gradually, the idea of choice big fan of strategic planning, for it too institution devoted entirely to graduate attached itself to educational politics often turns into an artificial exercise, education. and became one of the reforms sought there are plenty of opportunities for by those seeking to change the superintendents and principals to set system. The form choice takes the tone for schools and to focus remains controversial. Voters twice energy on one or two things. The rejected vouchers, but charter schools stronger the local identity, the more have gained increasing acceptance, schools can use the winds of change and LAUSD has within it two “charter rather than be buffeted by them. districts,” groups of schools that have Finally, institutional change offers semi-autonomous status. great opportunity for policy makers and advocates to think beyond the bounds What Does This Mean That I Should of the conventional institution. If the Do on Monday? four reform trends we see— These long-range trends have decentralization, choice, standards, Claremont Graduate University implications for short-range action. and grassroots participation—are School of Educational Studies accurate reflections of what we want Harper Hall 202 Our study in Los Angeles clearly for our schools, then it becomes the 150 East Tenth Street shows the district becoming an task of policy makers to design an Claremont, CA 91711 instrument of compliance where each institution that provides those qualities. law, regulation, or court decision is Task forces at both the city and state Phone translated into an organizational silo levels are beginning to consider (909) 621-8317 with a separate set of regulations, alternatives. Doubtless, some of them Fax funding stream, and enforcers. will advocate breaking up the Los (909) 621-8734 Specialized program knowledge has Angeles district. replaced organizational knowledge and E-mail distracted attention from the core (The Annenberg Foundation has [email protected] mission of the schools. Principals provided a grant to support this feared compliance audits more than research. However, the conclusions Web they feared low student achievement. expressed here are the author’s and do http://www.cgu.edu/ses Now, in the age of standards and not imply approval by the Foundation assessments, they cope with both. or represent its opinions.) As we examined the historical The Claremont Letter is published three times per year in the fall, winter, and spring. Charles Kerchner is the Hollis P. Allen Professor of Education at The If you would like to subscribe or Claremont Graduate University, and a specialist in educational organizations, unsubscribe please send an e-mail to educational policy, and teacher unions. [email protected]