Los Angeles Schools

The new leaders of the Los Angeles schools are working on a reorganization plan that would divide the 710,000-student system into semiautonomous units, each having its own superintendent. Ramon C. Cortines, who will become interim superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District on Jan. 15, sketched out the plan Friday for several state and federal legislators and California Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.

The 17-year-old football star's skin was black and his backpack red. Were it not for those colors, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, Jamiel Shaw II might never have been murdered by an 18th Street gang member eager to earn his stripes. Deputy Dist. Atty. Allyson Ostrowski said Pedro Espinoza, now 23, shot Shaw execution-style in 2008 thinking he was a Bloods gang member because he was African American and was carrying a red Spider-Man backpack. Shaw, who played for Los Angeles High School, was killed in March of that year just a few houses away from his Arlington Heights home.

The Citizens Coalition on Human Rights, a public-interest group affiliated with the Church of Scientology, set up a picket line outside Griffith Park, protesting alleged use of behavior-altering drugs in Los Angeles schools. About 300 adults and children, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with such sentiments as "Psychiatry Kills," carried signs attacking the psychiatric profession and alleging its members are trying to profit from unnecessary drug treatment of the young.

For the second year in a row, Granada Hills Charter High School won the California Academic Decathlon as Los Angeles Unified schools continued to dominate at the battle of wits that is at risk of being cut by the district in next year's budget. Los Angeles Unified on Sunday schools claimed five of the top 10 spots in the competition in Sacramento consisting of 65 teams and more than 550 students, with El Camino Real and Marshall taking second and third places, respectively. Franklin took fifth place and Taft 10th, while Torrance's West High School came in eighth.

Rand Corp. will conduct an 18-month evaluation of arts curricula in the Los Angeles schools. The Santa Monica-based nonprofit research institution will examine whether arts programs have been implemented, whether they make a difference in student achievement and whether they can be replicated on a large scale. Educators and policymakers are increasingly concerned about the erosion of arts programs in the nation's schools.

Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) said Tuesday that he is considering quitting the Legislature to accept a high-salaried job heading a group seeking to improve the quality of Los Angeles schools. "I am considering it," Roos told The Times, confirming a rumor that has been circulating in the state Capitol for the past several weeks.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan launched his L.A. Literacy Corps during a radio broadcast Wednesday, calling on businesses to chip in both money and employee time for schools. Under the program, employees would read to students and coach them in reading. Four companies answered the challenge during the broadcast on KFWB-AM (980) radio, beginning with the radio station.

Los Angeles school students scored substantially below the national average in reading at every grade level, plunging to the bottom fourth in third grade, a Times analysis of state standardized test scores shows. Reading scores improved through the eighth grade, then dipped again into the bottom quarter in the ninth and 10th grades. While the average was low, figures released Monday by the Los Angeles Unified School District showed tremendous variation between schools.

Mike Roos, the state Assembly Speaker Pro Tem who is stepping down March 1 to head a nonprofit group aimed at improving Los Angeles schools, faces a daunting task that could boost or break his career, according to business leaders and school district insiders who tapped him for the job.

Union lawyers may advise some Los Angeles teachers not to cooperate with the planned investigation of cheating on state achievement tests and student writing competency exams, according to a union official who complained that the probe is designed to cover up administrators' wrongdoing. "Our job is to protect the legal rights of our members," Marvin Katz, vice president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, American Federation of Teachers, said Friday.

Oct. 2010: A worker at a CVS pharmacy in the South Bay notices the images of children blindfolded, with tape over their mouth while processing film belonging to teacher Mark Berndt. He alerts Redondo Beach police. Dec. 2010: Redondo Beach police turn over investigation to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department after concluding the photos were taken at Berndt's classroom in an unincorporated section of South L.A. Jan. 3 , 2011: Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department detective Marvin Jaramilla goes to Berndt's Miramonte Elementary School classroom.

For the first time this year, LAUSD has prepared reports for teachers that rate their effectiveness. When I received an email saying I could now view my own personal "Average Growth over Time" report, I opened it with a combination of trepidation, resignation and indignation. First, the indignation. It is, I think, the key factor that has kept me teaching past the five-year mark, when most new teachers quit the profession. I am in my sixth year of teaching after a nearly 20-year career as a professional writer.

The cafeteria lunch offering at Santee Education Complex on Friday included a sad little hamburger on a bun the color of sawdust, cold sweet potato nuggets and a bag of sliced apples. I had lunch upstairs, in Bistro Mundo, a small cafe run by Santee's culinary arts students. Young chefs cooked and served a lovely French omelet, homemade muffins and a tasty salad that included fresh ingredients grown in their own garden near the athletic fields. The student cooks wore starched white chef jackets, and one of them, 17-year-old Ernesto Calixto, told me over a hot grill that he cooks only with olive oil, because it's healthier.

The Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union have agreed to a new pact granting local schools more autonomy over hiring, curriculum and work conditions and virtually ending a 2-year-old policy that allowed charter operators and others to take over low-performing and new campuses. The agreement, tentative until union members vote on it, doesn't resolve key contract disputes, including whether teacher evaluations should include students' standardized test scores, a provision L.A. schools Supt.

There's a shocking disconnect at work these days in the relationship between the public and government workers: The public is demanding greater accountability, and public employees — social workers, police, teachers, even state legislators — are finding ways to avoid it. Legislators contend that they should be allowed to conduct budget deliberations in private. Police unions are fighting forcefully to protect the names of officers involved in shootings or other uses of force.

A Koreatown campus that is one of the fastest-improving middle schools in Los Angeles has become the latest to be penalized over suspected cheating on the state's standardized tests. Virgil Middle School's misfortune brings to 23 the number of schools in California that have lost their important Academic Performance Index rating because of suspected cheating, other misconduct or mistakes by teachers. But in this instance, officials are concerned that the suspected actions of one teacher could cost the school a state grant worth more than $3.5 million over the next three years.

As a group of Ethiopian Jews walked off an airplane in 1991 after being secretly airlifted to Israel, William Lambert watched on television in Los Angeles and came up with an idea. "What would happen," he wondered, "if we could get a group of black Ethiopian Jews and bring them to Los Angeles?"

Moving to quell a furor over traditional versus progressive math instruction, Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias on Thursday rescinded an order by his top staffers to eliminate textbooks used in a federally funded enrichment program for poor minority students. In an interview, Zacarias said he was unaware of the July 23 order from the office of Deputy Supt.

The superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District suspended a new homework policy on Wednesday, saying it went into effect without enough public input. The policy limited homework to 10% of a student's grade; the rest would have been based on such measures as class assignments, tests and essays. The homework rules, which did not have to be approved by the Board of Education, went into effect July 1 by administrative order. The Los Angeles Times wrote about the policy June 27, the first public discussion about it. The policy drew nationwide attention and swift reaction: from praise to denunciation to confusion.