Education Reform

Risk-taking charter school operator Steve Barr is launching an effort through which parents would wrest political control of the L.A. school system from unions, school bureaucrats and other entrenched interests. The plan is for parents to form chapters all over town and improve schools, one by one, using the growing leverage of the charter school movement.

In a startling acknowledgment that the Los Angeles school system cannot improve enough schools on its own, the city Board of Education approved a plan Tuesday that could turn over 250 campuses -- including 50 new multimillion-dollar facilities -- to charter groups and other outside operators. The plan, approved on a 6-1 vote, gives Supt. Ramon C. Cortines the power to recommend the best option to run some of the worst-performing schools in the city as well as the newest campuses.

President Barack Obama strongly condemned the state of public education Tuesday, calling for more charter schools, higher salaries for effective teachers and the faster firing of bad ones, an agenda that could put him at odds with some longtime Democratic stalwarts in teachers unions. "It's time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones," Obama told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

President Obama on Tuesday laid out a series of challenges for the nation to meet in job training and college attainment, part of an effort to give every child a "complete and competitive education." The president, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, said his administration would provide the support needed to give the U.S. the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday unveiled a refurbished parent center on a middle school campus in South Los Angeles to spotlight his fledgling improvement efforts at 10 schools. The updated parent room at Gompers Middle School was joyfully received, but his overall effort has hit snags as his team struggles to boost student achievement while also including teachers and parents in vital decisions on how to move forward.

Even as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promises to enlist teachers and parents in his reform plan for Los Angeles schools, he has largely overlooked another group with a stake in his new enterprise: students. Villaraigosa might want to listen to 16-year-old Yamileth Capetillo, who goes to class on an empty stomach many days because her crowded high school, the Santee Education Complex near downtown, runs out of hot food for the second lunch shift.

Given a second round of balloting, teachers at the Santee Education Complex voted Tuesday to join the school reform effort of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, although questions persist about the election process. On the first try, a substantial majority of teachers voted yes, but the Dec. 11 tally still fell short of the required majority of all 181 eligible voters at the high school south of downtown.

The subject of education reform can inspire rhetoric verging on the poetic, replete with pedagogical innovations and experiments that promise the academic and social uplift of struggling students. But the work of improving schools is often anything but lyrical. It's research, collecting data, aligning standards. This nuts-and-bolts approach to improving schools is largely what Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell proposed in his State of Education speech Tuesday.

A venerable, ailing school got the official word this week on a long-awaited cure to its high dropout rate and low test scores: Crenshaw High will fix itself. That is the reform concept approved by parents and teachers at Crenshaw and also at Westchester High when they voted their schools into the new Innovation Division of the Los Angeles Unified School District. For both schools, the elections, which took place last week, signify a watershed moment.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, moving to improve struggling campuses that are taking part in his high-profile and high-stakes school reform effort, has tapped a veteran San Diego educator to take charge of instruction at those schools.