When Schools Work: Pluralistic Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles
by Bruce Fuller Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022, $39.95; 252 pages.
As president of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board from 2001 to 2003, I woke up most weekday mornings to scandalous headlines in the Los Angeles Times and a 5 a.m. call from the radio reporter seeking comment on the previous day’s educational horror show. After two years of this routine, I concluded that the reporters got about 10 percent right and missed about 90 percent of what actually happened. In When Schools Work, Bruce Fuller’s review of L.A.’s educational reforms over the past 20 years, the author is about 90 percent correct. Fuller makes a sincere effort to capture more than 150 years of history, uncovering intriguing recurring patterns and skillfully depicting the exceedingly complex, kaleidoscopic landscape of L.A.’s evolving educational policy.
Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, based his book on 15 years of field research in Los Angeles. What he’s getting right is the rise of pluralism in L.A. education policy. Before 1999, the scene was a constant tug-of-war between the unions and the school district bureaucracy. According to Fuller, the landscape entering the 21st century also included community-based organizers, charter school leaders and the philanthropic elite. Each of these groups had internal and external allegiances defined by their confidence in L.A. Unified’s ability to “reform” itself in ways that would result in better academic achievement and student well-being. In several instances, the beginning of the century marked a revolution on the part of many former insider loyalists like myself, who were running out of patience and confidence in the institution’s ability to overcome the adult special interest pull within the system. Mayor Richard Riordan was referring to L.A. Unified when he described (quoting Robin Williams) the etymology of “politics” as “poli,” meaning “many,” and “tic[k]s,” referring to “bloodsucking.” insects”.
During my first two years on the board (1999-2001), I met with fellow board members Genethia Hudley-Hayes (CEO of the L.A. Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and Mike Lansing (executive director of the San Pedro Boys & Girls Club) every other Tuesday at 7 :30 p.m. at Denny’s headquarters near L.A. Unified to find ways to keep the board’s focus on financial stability, essential reading, and building schools. Our strategy was simple: find the in-house innovators who agreed with us and devote tremendous resources. In September 1999, then-Chairman Hudley-Hayes refused to sign the district budget until Superintendent Ruben Zacarias allowed his senior academic director to bring a new phonics-based reading curriculum to the board vote. When Zacarias complained that the $8 billion district could not afford the $20 million needed to train the first cadre of teachers, Riordan convinced the Packard Foundation and others to provide the funds. Community organizers filled the meeting with parents demanding that their children be taught to read using best practices.
This is an example of what Fuller calls the “inside-outside strategy”: Use external resources and pressure to improve internal innovation and policy enforcement.
When we selected Roy Romer as our new superintendent the following July, the early adopters of the reading program were already on the grassroots, ready for him to bring it home. Historic increases in elementary school scores made headlines in subsequent years.
Next, Fuller describes the difficult drive to introduce the “A-G curriculum” to L.A. unified high schools that students must complete if they hope to enroll in the University of California system. Moníca García, then President of the School Board, drafted the original resolution in 2001 when she was Chief of Staff to the then President. She fought hard to get the curriculum adopted.
In the early 2000s, the school board voted three times to require a shift from courses like “Cash Register” (yes, really) to a rigorous curriculum that showed respect for students’ intelligence and aspirations. Each time, the bureaucracy failed to act, and the disenchantment that arose among civil society activists led to a massive drive to cultivate an external constituency that could withstand the political might of the bureaucrats and unions whose livelihoods depended on defending the status quo .
As Fuller accurately tells the story, making the curriculum change required intense community organizing and public protest from organizations like Inner City Struggle and the Community Coalition. The leaders of these groups not only organized to enforce the new curriculum policy; They kept up the pressure so the implementation was comprehensive, thorough and effective. In 2005, the district began aligning its graduation requirements with the 15 A–G college prep courses. Curriculum improvement has resulted in a significant increase in graduation rates and the proportion of those graduating college-ready.
A third example of dramatic change in the district involved a massive school building program. In 1999, classroom space was tight and 330,000 of the district’s 740,000 students traveled an average of 50 minutes by bus to and from school. In addition, almost all middle and high schools and more than 100 elementary schools had a calendar incorrectly labeled as “all year round.” “Year-round” in this context meant that the buildings were used all year round, but the students attended the standard number of minutes, compressed to 163 days instead of the usual 180. The data showed that students in year-round schools and those with long bus journeys averaged performed dramatically worse academically and had lower parental involvement when the results were adjusted for demographics. In addition, students in the higher poverty areas of the central, south, and east districts were disproportionately affected by bus traffic and overcrowding.
In 1999, Kathi Littmann, the district’s facilities director, proposed expanding the capital plan, which then included 42 new schools evenly distributed geographically. Littmann recommended a plan for 130 new schools in the most underserved neighborhoods. Between 1999 and 2005, the school board approved 4,400 parcel acceptances by significant area and worked closely with the city to prefund the housing authority so displaced residents could secure replacement housing—another example of the inside-outside strategy. Voters accepted more than $19.5 billion in construction bonds to support schools. As of 2017, the district had opened 137 new schools. In addition, Fuller’s study documents that the construction of these schools significantly increased student achievement. Apparently, teachers and students do their game better when they can work in nice spaces with good lighting, air conditioning, proper equipment, fiber optic cables, playing fields, and science labs. Dramatically reduced commute times and 17 more days of classes probably helped, too.
A fourth example of internal reformers working with external reformers occurred in 2007, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa launched the Los Angeles Schools Partnership after his failed attempt to take control of the borough. The school board has ceded control of its lowest-performing schools to the non-profit partnership, which has grown to 19 schools with 13,700 students. Teachers at partner schools are unionized but under a ‘thin’ contract. The partnership has reaped results, with their schools overall increasing by 18 percentage points in reading and 19 percentage points in math, with the high schools as a group seeing even larger gains. The success of the partnership relies on strong school leaders, highly effective teachers, and engaged and confident communities combined with strategic system changes. The board is made up of a diverse mix of parents, educators, philanthropists, higher education leaders, community coalition advocates, former government officials and business people. The organization is an example of the cross-sectoral approach that Fuller describes.
A fifth and final example that illustrates Fuller’s inside-outside theory and Invest in Internal Innovators strategy is the creation of the Belmont Zone of Choice. Area Superintendent Richard Alonzo knew that the congestion in this west-central neighborhood was so great that the new elementary schools that the facility plan called for were often only a few blocks apart. Managing catchments with such a concentration would be a nightmare. Working with Maria Castillas, a non-profit family engagement executive, Alonzo came up with the idea of specializing schools in different programs and giving families choice. Castillas brought families to board meetings to advocate not only for the Belmont Zone of Choice strategy, but also for initial needed action in key areas. When property owners came before the board to complain about the expropriation of their property, neighborhood parents (many of them monolingual Spanish speakers) countered that the Belmont Zone’s academic promise was for the greater good. This community-supported effort led to the adoption and implementation of the Zone of Choice.
The five examples of change show that when stakeholders unite and district leadership is properly motivated and resourced, schools improve. Between 2001 and 2017, 4th grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress increased by the equivalent of a full school year. While racial and ethnic differences in performance still exist, L.A. Unified was one of the fastest improving urban school systems along this stretch.
The achievements Fuller reports have required both internal and external leadership. However, these changes were not driven solely by good ideas, advocacy and money. They were also driven by fear. This is one of Fuller’s main points.
In 2005, the charter sector added small schools at a faster rate than the district. Many black and brown families gravitated toward charters that offered rigorous programs and got their students into college. In addition, philanthropists allied with founding members and community groups and invested heavily in opening quality schools in the most overcrowded and academically underserved neighborhoods. At the same time, traditional public schools in wealthier neighborhoods transitioned to charter status to gain control of their curriculum, administration, and budget while remaining unionized.
This move toward charter schools coincided with a decline in birth- and immigration-related school enrollments. The 2000 facility plan dictated that as LA’s population grew, the housing market would continue to build units to meet demand. That didn’t happen. According to newhomesdirectory.com, the price of a 1,500-square-foot single-family home in Los Angeles increased from $525,774 in 2007 to $641,228 in 2017 and $1,089,554 in 2021. Rents also increased, albeit not so strong. Although Los Angeles County’s population had grown 7 percent since 2000, people with children migrated to the eastern counties and lower-cost states, according to the California Department of Treasury.
In 2000, when the district was overcrowded and enrollments soared, charter schools were in their infancy. By 2010, L.A. Unified faced serious competition from the sector and responded by increasing the breadth and variety of school programs and options under the district’s direct control. As Fuller points out, many of the new programs were semi-autonomous pilot schools promoted by a social justice-minded reform coalition within United Teachers Los Angeles called NewTLA. These small schools served a disproportionate percentage of historically underserved students, and although their test scores did not surpass traditional schools, their graduation and college attendance rates did, and students reported feeling a greater sense of appreciation and academic support from their teachers felt .
During the study period, the Los Angeles teachers’ union became more hostile to charter schools. After the resignation of Governor Jerry Brown in 2019, the state leadership also changed its stance. Demands for a “level playing field” no longer meant giving more autonomy to traditional public schools to help them compete; They now meant reducing charter school autonomy through re-regulation.
After nearly two decades of steady growth, the district’s NAEP values fell noticeably between 2017 and 2019 — a development Fuller acknowledges but doesn’t attempt to explain. Between 2017 and 2019, L.A. Unified had three different superintendents and a concomitant reorganization of administrators. Many internal innovators have retired or otherwise left. Another mayor — one who focused more on homelessness and climate change than education — occupied City Hall. The decline also coincided with the end of dramatic increases in weighted funding per student in recent years, which never filled the budget hole created by the $2.9 billion in cuts required during the 2008 recession and by the US government increased operating costs caused by new schools. Additionally, a financial cliff could loom as pandemic relief dollars dry up and pension costs rise.
These setbacks raise questions about the district’s future, but shouldn’t detract from the progress of its recent past. As Fuller details in Data and Narrative, between 2002 and 2017 the rise of organized students, families, and community leaders coincided with targeted funding from philanthropists, competition from charters outside of the district’s control, and aggressive legal action by American Civil Liberties Union and Promotion project motivated bureaucracy and political smokescreen for elected officials to oppose the status quo. Fuller writes: “This vibrant network of contemporary pluralists has launched a new metropolitan politics. They relocated an institution in Los Angeles that was once declared dead.”
At this point I disagree with Fuller’s analysis. He defines the “education system” as the collection of traditional public schools directly controlled by the district. Accordingly, the data with which he documents the success of the reforms comes primarily from these district schools. This definition lost accuracy in the first 20 years of this century. He excludes data from 160,000 students educated in district-supervised charter schools, from more than 5,000 students in charters administered by non-district authorizers, from students in the shrinking private school sector, the growing home-schooling movement and the Role from outside – school learning through technology and media. I appreciate Fuller’s historical account and his account of the diverse political actors and strategies in the educational landscape. The next analysis needs to define and evaluate the city’s education system without marginalizing these other key players. From the perspective of families, students and business, the system is no longer a command-and-control hierarchy. It’s a vast ecosystem of interdependent actors that requires a new kind of governance and collaboration. Today, this educational ecosystem is diverse, robust and faces the opportunities and challenges of a pandemic-influenced development. It has real challenges, but also potential and promise.
