Much done, much to do at the L.A. charter school

She agrees with her faculty that teachers received too little support and training and that some floundered as a result. The school never got close to the level of parental involvement that Green Dot has long touted as one of its hallmarks; the outreach coordinator built a small corps of volunteers and stopped there. And she would have liked to do more to make sure that students were truly attending different schools rather than dropping out.

But Coleman, whose "summer vacation" will consist of one week off and shorter workweeks, already has teacher committees in place to address most of these issues. Higher goals are being set for the outreach staff. Class sizes will be 24 to 27 students -- with enough teachers in place to stick to those numbers even if attendance is markedly higher than expected.

What makes Locke different under Green Dot, then, isn't that the charter operator has the magic formula for successful schools. It's that the people in charge don't spend years obfuscating, defending and delaying when things don't work. They do something to fix it.

The future of Locke is in the ninth-grade academies that will add a new freshman class each year until they resemble the usual Green Dot model: small schools built from the freshmen up. These students will have no firsthand knowledge of the old Locke ways. They'll think uniforms are natural. They'll know how to take notes. And, Zuniga hopes, they won't think of finals week as their own personal vacation.

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Previous editorials in this series can be found at latimes.com/locke-high.