We Must Think of Each Child in the LAUSD as Our Own

At the age of 8, I walked through the front door of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Melrose Avenue Elementary School. My parents, to whom I owe everything, were immigrants and neither had gone past elementary school.

Of all the questions I have been asked about going to work with the school district, one of the most disturbing is, “Why are you doing this?� When the CEO of one of Southern California’s leading companies and leaders in education and government ask me that question, I ask them, “Why aren’t you doing this?� I am not the only one who bears a lifetime debt to the Los Angeles public schools or who relies on these schools and students for the future of our community.

We all know education is the foundation of our future. Beneath the current turmoil at the LAUSD are determined people who want to change the culture of public education in Los Angeles from one that excuses failure into one that accepts the challenge of true achievement.

Three things will make that change: standards, accountability and partnerships.

The most basic need is for strong standards of student achievement. A high school diploma from every LAUSD school should stand for something.

Every student upon graduation should be fluent in at least two languages, one of which must be English. Every student should be able to analyze complex reading material and write with clarity and style.

Every student should have the human skills to appreciate and function in a multicultural society and have the job skills for a lifetime of valuable work.

Every student should have fundamental mathematical skills, including algebra, geometry and basic statistics. Every student should understand the basics of biology, chemistry and physics. Every student should be able to read and critique poetry.

Every student should know the structure of U.S. and world history and understand our system of government. Every student should be able to appreciate the arts, including music and drama. Every student should be familiar with the operation and uses of computers.

It is a measure of how far our expectations have fallen that most people, seeing this list, will think it is impossible.

However, the curse of education is low expectations. Students in other countries regularly meet those standards, as do students in the the best U.S. schools, public and private.

How can these standards be met?

Standards require accountability, from students and their families, from teachers and from administrators.

Students bear responsibility for discipline, focus and behavior. All children can be motivated to carry this responsibility; all children can be taught.

When a child fails, it is significantly a failure of the schools. Every single person in the district should have defined goals, responsibility and authority, all of which ultimately lead to student achievement.

The LAUSD has been run by committees. That is changing. Individual decision makers can receive advice from a committee, but each ultimate decision should be by an individual who signs off and is responsible for it.

The most basic partnership of the district is with teachers. After raising children, teaching is the noblest human calling. Our teachers are not respected as they should be. They are not compensated as they should be.

To earn this respect and just compensation, teachers must lead the focus on performance and accountability. Change in the standards of teaching will involve real commitment and compromise by the district and teachers and their leaders.

The district also needs partnerships with the community and the private sector. We have already begun a process of having widespread community involvement in school site selection. That process will work better than the old way of identifying sites and then simply fighting those who were opposed.

This may be the greatest opportunity in a generation to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District. I deeply regret the pain in large and vital parts of our community, especially the Latino community, caused by change in the district.

We cannot deny that pain. Our challenge is to link it throughout our community with the pain felt by students in the LAUSD. Some students run home from school every day to the bathrooms in their own homes because they have no access to working bathrooms at school. Hundreds of thousands of children lack clean and safe schools, adequate textbooks and other essentials of education. Their lives are being destroyed daily by pain that falls drop by drop upon their hearts.

We have grown so accustomed to educational failure that we accept it as a fact of nature. It is not. If we let the pain of our children fall upon our hearts, we will see that it is not.

Management and accountability are not often spoken in the same breath as the pain of students and teachers. However, management and accountability are more than methods to avoid another $170-million Belmont Learning Complex or numerous environmental problems in our schools.

Management and accountability are the tools for achieving our educational goals, beginning with demonstrated successes in students’ and teachers’ lives. Management can start initiatives that affect daily lives. We can immediately put together executive teams with LAUSD managers and help from the private sector to attack--first in specific locations and then throughout the district--the critical facilities and educational materials needs.

Our city has some of the most successful businesses in the world. It has great universities, brilliant scientists and powerful artists. Can we once again have the best schools? Can we think of each child in the LAUSD as our own? Will we continue to be trapped in the educational politics of the past, or can we together meet the challenges of the future?

The choice is ours.