L.A.'s schools -- a new day?

We've all heard the horror stories about crumbling campuses, falling test scores, growing class sizes and decreasing graduation rates. Yet the debate over education reform remains stuck in neutral. School leaders, principals and unions haggle over contracts instead of hashing out lesson plans. We fight yesterday's battles -- over tenure and time sheets -- when today's economy demands real, tangible reform of what goes on in the classroom.

For too long, leaders at every level of government have defended a status quo that serves the interests of adults more than children; that gives bureaucrats a near monopoly over public education; that shuts parents out of the conversation; and that, over and over, fails our kids.

It's time to get past the gatekeepers and stop preserving a system defined by low performance, low standards and low expectations. It's time to embrace new ideas and reclaim concepts such as accountability and competition, and it's time to admit the need for more than one educational choice. Put simply, it's time to put students first.

On Aug. 25, the Los Angeles Board of Education will have the opportunity to take the first real step toward reforming our broken system and transforming our schools. Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar has proposed a measure that would fundamentally change the way we run our schools, giving organizations outside the Los Angeles Unified School District -- charter school groups, teacher collaboratives and others -- the chance to compete to operate new campuses set to open in fall 2010.

Instead of merely handing these campuses over to the district, the school board would require prospective school operators to submit a detailed plan on how they would run the new school. The plans would be judged based on the operator's past record of success, the inclusion of metrics for measuring that success and the educational vision for the new school. The superintendent would evaluate each plan and recommend to the board the operator with the superior plan to run the school.

I urge the board members to pass this motion.

This measure can bring us closer to realizing the goals at the center of our reform efforts: Every child in Los Angeles ought to have access to a high-quality public school in his or her neighborhood.