A Number of Lessons to LEARN

In 1995, I signed on as a lead teacher for the Los Angeles Educational Alliance For Restructuring Now--LEARN. I believed this was the last and probably best opportunity to rescue our ailing Los Angeles Unified School District. It never occurred to me that we would be betrayed.

I agreed to sacrifice hundreds of hours of personal time attending training sessions conducted by the UCLA School Management Program. I shared in the management of our school with our principal, students, staff and parents. This involved hours of planning and discussion to arrive at our shared vision and what we wanted students to be able to know and do as graduates. Nobody helped with my classroom responsibilities while I did this, although my principal did all she could to make teaching as light a burden as possible.

I willingly participated in this movement called LEARN because I believed in its principles: that all children can learn, and that the stakeholders--the staff, students and parents--are the best ones to determine how to bring about learning.

This involved control, of course. Control at the local school level of how the school’s budget should be spent and of the hiring (and firing) of the principal, teachers and other staff.

In return for this control, I agreed, along with the other stakeholders, to be held accountable for the success or failure of the program--a sensible, mature and intelligent approach. LEARN promised to give those who had the greatest stake in the outcome the power to bring about change.

Unfortunately, very little that was promised has been delivered.

The training was good but extended an extra year without the stakeholders’ permission and under the threat of withholding a certificate of completion from the School Management Program. (A certificate of participation instead of completion was finally given--a small, but important distinction.)

My school and others in the North Hollywood / Polytechnic Cluster had to struggle with the Board of Education in order for Sun Valley Middle School to have the right to participate in the hiring of its principal, and later to have that same right applied to selection of our cluster leader, a concept clearly spelled out by the LEARN documents. I was left with the impression that we would have to battle for every important principle of the LEARN process.

We had to endure very poorly planned and conducted workshops in the dissemination of districtwide “standards,” even though every LEARN school had been through hours and hours of work to establish standards for their school, with the active participation of their stakeholders. Now district standards must supersede those developed by the stakeholders.

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We are not any closer to having control of how our money is to be spent then when we started more than three years ago.

And just recently--the ultimate betrayal--we received a directive from the retiring superintendent that all LEARN schools have to accept “must place” employees, those, including teachers, who have in many cases received two or more unfavorable ratings. Although the new superintendent has said in informal meetings that LEARN schools will only have to interview must-place employees, the directive has not been formally rescinded.

The lack of freedom in the hiring of staff by the stakeholders of a school community is an attack at the foundation of the LEARN accountability / responsibility concept. It destroys the whole point of giving control to those who have the most to gain or lose by it.

Ironically, Supt. Ruben Zacarias’ inclusion of LEARN schools in the list of those 100 needing special intervention by the district is putting the cart before the horse. Intervention should only come after control and responsibility have been given to the LEARN school, and the school has then failed. Zacarias has been quoted as saying that the textbook shortage is partly a failure of decentralization and that “local decision making does not give that much autonomy.”

But I believe that local decision making is exactly about autonomy. Total autonomy and total accountability.

Three years ago I signed a contract with the school district. I agreed to follow the LEARN principles in the administration of my school. In return, I expected the district to honor those same principles.

I am willing to be held accountable for the success or failure of my school, but only if I am allowed to succeed, and that means control at the local level. LEARN, the last and best chance for educational reform, must be given a fair chance to succeed.