Education Reform Los Angeles

A group of prominent business and community leaders has begun meeting to explore ways to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District and make its ruling establishment more accountable. The group, which held its second meeting Tuesday at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce headquarters, was convened by Harold M. Williams, president emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and Roy A. Anderson, chairman and CEO of the Weingart Foundation.

A group of prominent business and community leaders has begun meeting to explore ways to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District and make its ruling establishment more accountable. The group, which held its second meeting Tuesday at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce headquarters, was convened by Harold M. Williams, president emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and Roy A. Anderson, chairman and CEO of the Weingart Foundation.

Re "Give charter schools their due," Editorial, Nov. 25 It is beyond me why The Times believes charter schools have been any kind of "spark" to education reform in Los Angeles. Your editorial claims that charter schools deserve credit for "changing the discussion about poor and minority students," but studies have shown that in an apples-to-apples comparison, the charters perform no better than their counterparts. So when you also consider charter schools' shameful avoidance of special-education students (which, as you point out, benefits the schools' test scores)

Public schools in Los Angeles could earn cash bonuses if students' attendance and test scores improve and risk closure if pupils don't perform well, under a plan proposed by the education reform group Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN).

We so rarely see really good news on the front page, so I thought I'd write and thank you for "Audit Faults L.A. School District for Slow Reform" (March 17). My observations of schools in which "reform" is proceeding very rapidly lead me to suggest the following maxim: Slow is good. Slow means there is time for teachers and students to adjust to new ideas and to evaluate how well they are working. Slow allows time for schools to add innovations gradually while keeping existing programs in place until they are clearly seen as useless.

Upping the ante in the debate over education reform in Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday that he planned to gain authority over the city's schools before the end of his current term. In recent months he had appeared to back away from earlier statements that he sought control of the schools, saying instead that he wanted to first build consensus on the idea.

The death of Helen Bernstein is a tremendous loss to our Los Angeles school community (April 4-5). Her leadership was a true inspiration to teachers who were working to reform our schools. While recognizing that the first duty of a teachers' union was to protect our contractual rights, she was also committed to the idea of making our profession stronger through teacher excellence and commitment to increased student achievement. Those ideas caused many union members to discount her as a union leader because they strayed from the traditional union jargon.

During the past seven to 10 years, hopes for improvements in Los Angeles public schools have gone unfulfilled, disappointing the business community and the public. In fact, the disillusionment has increased and the slide continues. For example, a recent nationwide survey of high school completion rates in 37 metropolitan areas showed the Los Angeles/Anaheim/Riverside area to be 31st out of 37.

Los Angeles labor unions that poured more than $1.5 million and hundreds of volunteers into an effort to elect Antonio Villaraigosa mayor in 2001 are running a significantly smaller campaign this year on behalf of Mayor James K. Hahn. Miguel Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said the coalition of 345 locals plans to spend $500,000 to $800,000 in this spring's city election to urge union members to reelect the mayor.

Carrying two briefcases--one soft-sided, one hard, both filled to bloat--Day Higuchi can be spotted frequently hurrying through the corridors at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters, late for an important appointment. If it's a typical day for Higuchi, he left his Silver Lake home before 7 a.m. for a power breakfast--with a politician, perhaps, or a national labor union leader--and he may not return until near midnight, when he will raid his refrigerator for leftovers.