The Long Beach Unified School District was again named a finalist Wednesday for the prestigious Broad Prize, which honors academic excellence and strong performance by minority and poor students in urban districts across the nation.
"It's a huge honor," said Christopher J. Steinhauser, superintendent of the nearly 91,000-student district. "We pride ourselves on a path of continual improvement, and to be recognized by the [Eli and Edythe Broad] foundation as one of the top five school systems in America every time we've been eligible is a huge honor for teachers, students and parents."
In 2003, Long Beach Unified won the prize, which includes $500,000 in college scholarships. The district -- the third-largest in California -- has been a top-five finalist every year it has been eligible since the inception of the prize, an honor that comes with $125,000 in scholarships. Districts that win the prize are then ineligible for three years.
The four other finalists this year are districts in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Miami, as well as the Aldine Independent School District near Houston and the Brownsville Independent School District on the Texas-Mexico border. The winner will be announced Oct. 14 in New York City.
Districts cannot apply for the award. Instead, researchers determine improvement in several areas of student performance based on data from the nation's 100 largest cities, and compare student achievement among various districts with similar demographics.
Long Beach was recognized in part because in 2007, its students outperformed those in other California school districts with similar income levels in reading and math at all grade levels. Latino and lower-income students had greater reading and math proficiency than their peers elsewhere in the state, and black students had greater math proficiency. Minority students also were more likely to take the SAT and AP college entrance tests, and to score better. The district has also built on prior gains.
"They continued to improve year after year," said Erica Lepping, a spokeswoman for the foundation. "It's obvious they are doing something systematically that is leading to these gains."
One of the qualities that has helped the district is strong, sustained leadership, Lepping said. Steinhauser has been with the district for 26 years and has been its leader for six -- double the average tenure of a superintendent of a large school district. The previous superintendent served for a decade.
