Los Angeles Education

A Boyle Heights school has started to climb out of the academic cellar after years of floundering in reading and math. A school in South Los Angeles is suddenly approaching the national average on standardized tests after counting itself among the city's lowest achievers. A third campus, in Silver Lake, has surpassed its own expectations by leaping 12 percentile points to the head of the academic pack.

Modest gains by Los Angeles Unified students on the Stanford 9 standardized test translated into a qualified victory for school officials. For a second year, Supt. Ruben Zacarias was able to claim progress toward his goal of raising scores 8 percentile points in four years. Scores for limited-English-speaking students and those fluent in English increased in most grade levels.

Elementary school students earned the highest gains in reading and math on statewide standardized tests while those in upper grades posted little, if any, improvement, according to preliminary review of several local districts. After weeks of delay, the California Department of Education on Thursday released the highly anticipated Stanford 9 test results on the Internet.

Four Los Angeles school board members took their oaths of office Thursday, pledging to reform a district they said is in crisis. "I issue a warning to those individuals who, for their own selfish needs, hope to slow reform: For the self-serving, if you get in the way, we will run you over like a speed bump," new board member Mike Lansing said after the ceremony. Newcomers Caprice Young and Genethia Hayes and second-termer David Tokofsky were sworn in along with Lansing.

Los Angeles schools are abusing the anti-bilingual education law, Proposition 227, by continuing to teach some children in Spanish and by urging parents to waiver out of English-intensive classes, according to a county grand jury report released Wednesday.

They have been dubbed the bottom 30 schools in Los Angeles, a distinction that dragged them through two years of scrutiny and humiliation. And now they face much worse: With the posting of statewide test scores next week, any of the schools that fail to improve are to be placed into receivership, with key budget and curriculum decisions taken over by bureaucrats downtown. There is only one problem.

There was hope in the air Wednesday at the Los Angeles Board of Education. Genethia Hayes' narrow victory over incumbent member Barbara Boudreaux in Tuesday's runoff election created a majority of reformers on the seven-member panel and set the stage for a possible overhaul of the city's beleaguered public education system. Hayes, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Los Angeles branch, wants a comprehensive audit of the Los Angeles Unified School District's $7.

A $40-million math and reading program that offers students $6,000 each in scholarships was approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education for a targeted area in the northeast San Fernando Valley. Project GRAD (Graduation Really Achieves Dreams), which was approved late Tuesday night, draws on national reform programs that research has shown to be effective in raising math and reading scores and reducing dropout rates.

A $40-million math and reading program that offers students $6,000 scholarships for college was approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education for a targeted area in the San Fernando Valley. Project GRAD (Graduation Really Achieves Dreams), which was approved late Tuesday night, draws on national reform programs that research has shown to be effective in raising math and reading scores and reducing dropout rates.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials on Monday unveiled the largest urban education reform program in U.S. history--their plan for ending social promotion and launching intervention programs for 139,000 students in danger of being held back in June 2000. Officials had worried that the $71-million effort, which aims to end social promotion a year earlier than the rest of the state, could collapse without the involvement of parents citywide.