Monday, August 26, 2002 in Los Angeles Daily News
by Michael Warder
The rules of education have changed.
The Supreme Court decided in late June that public money could fund vouchers that allow parents to choose particular private schools for their children, even if the schools are religious.
And the “No Child Left Behind” law takes effect this summer. It states that if poorly performing schools fail to improve, low-income parents can send their children to a public school of their choice in the same district.
Both of these changes are an admission that public schools in America are not doing the job.
Let’s agree, especially in light of the recent announced Stanford 9 results, that here in Los Angeles some public schools do pretty well and some bad schools are getting better.
That said, there are tens of thousands of children who, because of massive overcrowding, have no choice this year but to attend absolutely terrible schools.
Teachers with seniority can choose to teach elsewhere, but the students are stuck.
More than 17,000 children last year had to be bused all over greater Los Angeles because of overcrowding. Many students only attend 163 days of school.
Indeed, Roy Romer, superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District, has said recently that there are now 200,000 more children than there is classroom capacity for.
There is a November LAUSD ballot measure for a $3.3 billion bond to build new schools and to expand existing schools. Statewide, there is a $13.3 billion measure on the ballot for school construction.
Even if both measures pass, which in these economically uncertain times is not certain, the likelihood that enough schools could be built in the next three years to begin to provide something approaching adequate classroom capacity takes quite a leap of faith.
And even if there were adequate space, there still remains the problem of educating children.
According to national data from the U.S. Department of Education, the ratio of teachers to pupils has gone in the last 30 years from 22 students per teacher to 16 students per teacher. Per-student expenditures in the same period, in constant dollars, has increased from $3,367 to $6,584.
Educational achievement in that same time frame remains uniformly poor with no improvement. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), at the national level 71 percent of our fourth-graders are not proficient in math, and 69 percent are not proficient in reading.
In California for the most recent years test results are available, 84 percent of our fourth-graders are not proficient in math, and 76 percent of our fourth-graders are not proficient in reading.
California is near the bottom of the country by such measures, and Los Angeles is ranked at the bottom of California.
To propose changes in education is risky business. Yet, sailing along with an educational model of public education that performs poorly is risky, too. It is risky for the children and risky for the future of our country.
In addition to publicly funded vouchers programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee, there are other innovations:
• In Philadelphia, the local public school system contracted with three private companies to run about 45 of their schools to see if they can do better.
• The New York City public school system picked a federal prosecutor, as opposed to a career educator, with a career in antitrust law to lead the education system.
• Pennsylvania passed a $30 million state tax credit for businesses that contribute money either to public schools or to organizations that provide tuition assistance for children to attend private schools.
Further, about 1 million of America’s children are now home-schooled, while about 5 million attend private schools.
In addition, well over 500,000 children attend charter schools, nonsectarian public schools organized with a unique school vision and a much higher degree of local autonomy than typical public schools.
In Los Angeles County, there are now 45 such charter schools.
Another education innovation locally is the work of the Los Angeles Children’s Scholarship Fund, which provides partial tuition assistance for 3,000 children from low-income families so they can attend private schools. The money comes from tax-deductible gifts from foundations, corporations and individuals.
There are now somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 empty spaces in the private schools of Los Angeles. Clearly more could be done right now to relieve the current overcrowding in the public schools.
As we begin another school year, we need to look carefully to see which innovations are working and to avoid repeating proven formulas of educational failure.
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Michael Warder is executive director of the Los Angeles Children’s Scholarship Fund. Write to him by e-mail at mwarder@lacsf.org.