CommentsEDUCATION POLIITICS-LAUSD is a business that for generations has been more concerned with the well-being of its exclusive "agreed vendors" of goods and services than it has been for the successful formation of its students. The uncontested reason for the very existence of this behemoth as the second largest school district in the United States is what is called the “economics of scale.” This is where, in theory, a larger entity like LAUSD, with its enormous buying power, should be able to get the best price for goods and services at the lowest wholesale market price.
However, the opposite reality has been the case for generations. For years, you could go into any retail store and buy almost anything for less than LAUSD pays for it. You could even get the newer more up to date model or version with better warranties.
So why is it that LAUSD remains such a dysfunctional entity, rife with incessant scandals such as the building of Belmont High School on an irremediable toxic waste dump or the way-over-budget Ambassador Hotel high school being built with talking benches or the still unaddressed $1.3 billion iPad debacle? Why is this happening generation after generation to the detriment of the vast majority of its primarily poor and minority students?
The reason? Power corrupts. And unnecessarily centralized power corrupts absolutely. While the idea of “economics of scale” might be reluctantly tolerated, what is never addressed is that the consolidation of power brings the danger of endemic corruption -- especially when highly centralized administrative business decisions are made by inexperienced ex-teacher administrators who are ill-equipped to stand up to the sophisticated vendors who’ve been bilking the district for years.
Into this fray comes new LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King, who has moved up the ranks in this purposefully flawed de facto segregated, academically underachieving culture over the past thirty years. She has done this by not by making waves and by going along to get along. When you examine who the LAUSD chooses for its superintendent (or any administrative position), it seems that the most important qualification is the assurance that person will do nothing to change its vendor-friendly, student-toxic culture.
Whether it is Michelle King or her most recent predecessors Ramon Cortines and John Deasy, the hallmark of this type of “reform” leadership is that it only addresses the effects of a long-failed LAUSD public education but never the underlying causes. King’s first suggestion upon entering the superintendent's job was to have exclusively all boy and all girl campuses. This notion is supported by competent academic authorities, yet it doesn’t address the damage of socially promoting students who arrive in kindergarten already way behind.
Instead of championing an early intervention program addressing each student's academic level, irrespective of age, it seems that under Michelle King, LAUSD will continue to socially promote ill-prepared students…who are then assured to fail whether they are in a mixed gender or single gender school.
The same is true for her second goal: "making sure every student graduates." Again this cannot be done without addressing the deficits underlying each student’s prior grade level achievements in a timely, age-sensitive manner. Up until now, this is something that has remained conspicuously absent in the plans of prior LAUSD superintendents. Why do they never question of failure of social promotion and the assured subsequent academic failure?
It’s human nature to not change unless there are known negative consequences. But one cannot blame LAUSD administrators alone, especially since no local, state, or federal oversight has done anything to hold LAUSD accountable for its failure. Socially promoted students lacking the skills they should have with a high school diploma arrive at junior college unprepared. Unfortunately, 75% continue to fail, some taking remedial classes, and a disproportionate number of them dropping out; and there is no governmental agency legally charged with intervening, asking questions like, "What's going on here and who's fixing the grades and the CAHSEE exams that these students have supposedly passed?"
It is not lost on me that new LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King is an African American and a woman. One can only hope that she will comport herself in a manner befitting the needs of what remains a nearly 90% de facto segregated school system. And this is 62 years after Brown v. Board of Education said, "Separate but equal...is inherently unequal." Yes, and I still believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 14 Issue 6
Pub: Jan 19, 2016
Is New Supe Michelle King the Latest LAUSD Vendor Vassal?
