Schools Chief Vows to Raise Test Scores

In the first major speech of his seven-month tenure as superintendent of schools, Ruben Zacarias on Thursday promised to raise standardized test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District by 8 percentile points over the next four years--a 25% increase from where students now languish.

During the hourlong address, Zacarias said he would require elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program, push hard for students to move out of bilingual education more expeditiously and require that all schools adopt some of the tenets of education reform, including collaborative decision making. And he reiterated his repugnance for the practice of “social promotion,” in which students are automatically advanced a grade every year.

In past months, Zacarias’ most notable pledge had been to focus on the district’s 100 lowest-performing schools, most of which have set improvement goals of raising test scores by 5 percentile points. But on Thursday he cast his net of expectations more broadly.

“I’m not going to insult your intelligence and give you a lot of pap . . . but I can stand here and tell you face to face that we can achieve these goals,” he told an invitation-only audience of educators and school reformers. “I’ve seen enough of this school district to know we’re better than we think we are.”

The speech had long been simmering behind the scenes, where leaders of the district’s largest reform plan--LEARN--began agitating in the fall for Zacarias to take decisive action to improve schools or face a political revolt.

An 8-point boost from last year’s 33rd percentile showing would leave the state’s largest district 8 points shy of the national median that Zacarias has consistently said he intends to reach.

The new goal was set in consultation with outside management experts, who strove to mute optimism with realism based on other urban districts’ experiences.

In an effort to push Zacarias into taking bold steps, the leaders of LEARN threatened to pull their campuses out of the district altogether--possibly by forming a new, state-chartered district--unless he accepted their counsel. In private negotiations, they offered to provide him with new management tools, including arranging the free consulting services with management specialists McKinsey & Co., whose staffers helped Zacarias set his goals.

As part of that well-choreographed production, LEARN Chairman William Ouchi and President Mike Roos set the stage for Thursday’s speech by penning a commentary in The Times earlier this week lauding Zacarias for his strength.

Both Roos and Ouchi attended Thursday’s speech and praised Zacarias’ forthrightness. Though both downplayed the scope of their influence on the superintendent’s new goals, they acknowledged that they had played a role.

LEARN, which the district adopted in 1993 in a desperate effort to counter the burgeoning school voucher movement, offers individual campuses more autonomy from Los Angeles Unified’s bureaucracy. In return, participating schools--which number about 40% of the district’s campuses--are supposed to be held to more rigid standards of accountability.

Zacarias’ major nod to LEARN in his speech Thursday included a promise of LEARN-like decision making and budget autonomy for all district schools, tied to LEARN-like demands for student achievement.

Citing similarities among the many versions of reform coexisting in L.A. Unified and beyond, Zacarias said, “These reform principles . . . are universal truths that call for collaboration, a specific action plan for improving student achievement and budget flexibility.”

Roos hailed Zacarias’ speech as a “watershed” for laying down the law that reform is inevitable for every district school.

“The intent is very clear,” Roos said. “Everybody has to choose a reform plan.”

The change represents a significant retreat for LEARN, which hoped to reach all schools within five years. It offered budget autonomy only to those schools that first completed the hard work of reorganization, including intensive training in how to involve parents, teachers and staff in decision making. But hundreds of campuses have yet to embrace it.

Ouchi said the LEARN Working Group, a panel of educators and political and business leaders, had recently concluded that LEARN would never reach its 100% participation goal.

“What we want is not credit, but change,” Ouchi said.

Zacarias added that LEARN had long been based on a contradiction: What made it work was its voluntary nature, but an all-district deployment would require involuntary participation. The only difference under his plan, he said, is that schools would not be “putting up the big white banner”--referring to the green and white banner LEARN schools unfurl.

In his speech, Zacarias also dropped hints of the kind of get-tough stance reformers have long advocated. He said everyone would be held responsible for student performance, including parents.

Even students will not be let off the hook, he said, again criticizing social promotion but offering no glimpse of how that uncontrolled process might begin to be tamed beyond vowing to form a panel to study solutions.

Those who criticized the speech focused on its lack of specifics in guaranteeing accountability.

“It’s clear to me the district . . . [doesn’t] have a plan on it,” said school board member Jeff Horton. “To say everyone is responsible isn’t a plan. You have to link employment to that.”

Added Theodore Mitchell, Mayor Richard Riordan’s education advisor and dean of UCLA’s School of Education: “It’s a very positive framework . . . [but] implementation is now going to be the challenge, for all of us.”

Zacarias promised to roll out more specific proposals in the coming weeks and during this year’s negotiations with employee unions.

After the speech, Augie Herrera, principal of Belmont High School--62nd on the list of 100 lowest-performing schools--said he believes that the 8 percentile point improvement is attainable if there is adequate intervention to help students who fall behind.

It would require tutoring and other assistance after school, between semesters and on Saturdays, Herrera said, using teachers and outside tutoring companies.

Despite the reassurances of outside consultants and inside staff alike that Zacarias’ goals are attainable, questions remain about whether the district can begin to turn the corner toward improvement after years of decline.

Just three years ago, Zacarias’ predecessor, Sid Thompson, announced his own set of goals, which he dubbed the “Call to Action.” Thompson’s plans seemed similarly modest: a 1 percentile point gain in test scores per year, for instance.

Nonetheless the district fell short of expectations. Overall, even the 1-point gain was not reached districtwide. In a recent comparison of LEARN and non-LEARN schools, only 11% of non-LEARN schools met the standard for the fourth-grade reading test, while LEARN schools varied from 14% for schools that joined in LEARN’s second year, to 31% for those entering in its first year.

Times education writer Doug Smith also contributed to this story.