L.A. Unified Gets Dismal Ratings From Public

At a time when education is the No. 1 issue in Los Angeles, a majority of people living in the Los Angeles Unified School District have a low opinion of their public schools, and those with children overwhelmingly would prefer to send them to private institutions, according to a Los Angeles Times Poll.

The poll found that 70% of parents of school age children in the Los Angeles district rate their public schools fair to poor. Nonetheless, 83% of all residents living within the district believe change is possible, offering district officials a potential reservoir of goodwill as they try to implement reform.

Black parents have the bleakest assessment of their schools, with 70% rating them “poor.” They also maintain the most optimistic outlook, with 93% saying change is possible.

On other issues of pressing concern for the Los Angeles school district:

* A majority of L.A. Unified residents favor breaking up the sprawling school district, which serves 711,000 students from Northridge to San Pedro. Such sentiment is highest on the Westside, with 66% of residents saying they support breakup, followed by the southern part of the city at 64%. The San Fernando Valley, which has been the hotbed of breakup activity, showed strong support at 59%.

* As the district heads into labor negotiations with the teachers union, 61% of residents feel teachers are paid too little for their services. Half of residents support the district’s effort to tie teacher pay to performance, while 58% of respondents with school age children support the concept.

* As the district searches for a new superintendent, nearly three-quarters of respondents with school age children want their next schools chief to be an educator. District officials have expressed interest in candidates with business, government or military backgrounds. Also, 83% of parents, including 74% of Latino parents, said it is not important that the next superintendent be a Latino, even though the district is 70% Latino.

* Fifty percent of residents, including 61% of parents of school age children, support the Board of Education’s decision to stop construction of the Belmont Learning Complex. Interestingly, a majority of residents in the central part of the district, where the complex would be located, support the decision to kill Belmont, while Valley residents are most likely to favor completing the high school. And although Latino activists have been most vocal in trying to revive the project, nearly half of Latino parents, including a majority in the central area, approve of the decision to kill the project.

The Times Poll, under the direction of Susan Pinkus, interviewed 2,202 residents countywide, including 1,404 city and county residents who live within the district’s boundaries. Of the total, 349 were parents of school age children. The poll was conducted between March 29 and April 5.

The sentiments expressed in the poll, which has a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points in either direction, come at a pivotal time for Los Angeles Unified. In addition to negotiating new contracts with its unions and searching for a new superintendent, the district is moving ahead on a plan to reorganize itself into 11 so-called mini-districts.

“Clearly, the time is right for major change and reforms,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

“There’s a convergence of forces at work here,” he said. “A good economy is making people want to invest in education. At the same time, continuous negative reports about the district’s activities is laying the groundwork for an overhaul.”

Board of Education President Genethia Hayes agreed. “If we don’t get it done right now, we never will.

“Our focus is to make this system work, and build into it enough flexibility to adjust it when we need to,” she said. “But to do that, we’re having to dig deep into the guts of this institution, which has been dysfunctional for at least two decades.”

Black Parents Most Dissatisfied

The quality of public schools was ranked the No. 1 issue facing the city of Los Angeles, ahead of traffic and crime. Residents served by Los Angeles Unified expressed great dissatisfaction with the public schools. Fifty-eight percent of Latino parents, 67% of white parents and 94% of black parents rated their local schools as fair to poor. Asians were included in the poll but not in sufficient numbers to yield separate findings.

Thomas Briggs, a poll respondent who agreed to be interviewed, said, “when I was growing up, California had a reputation for fine schools. Now, it’s just a logjam of institutional inertia and political battles between the district and the union.

“My kids are in private school,” he said. “One of them comes from the Taiwan school system, which is years ahead of ours. If she was in [the] public school system she’d be so far ahead of everyone else she’d be completely bored. That’s too bad.”

The discontent expressed by African Americans underlines growing concerns in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods that black children are being left behind academically.

In a district where 14% of the students are black, much of the attention has been paid to the 70% who are Latino, some black parents said.

“The attention paid to Latinos is well deserved,” said respondent Oscar Campbell, 38, whose daughter attends public high school. “But I don’t think we can say there’s been enough focus on the needs of African American kids. I also believe more emphasis is placed on upper-class schools in terms of resources and teacher qualifications.

“But I’m not sure a breakup would resolve the problems,” said Campbell, who was among those who opposed breaking up the district.

Forty-three percent of black parents opposed a breakup, while 45% supported it. Latino parents were similarly split on the issue, while 71% of white parents favored breaking up the district.

Los Angeles retail manager Michael Armstrong, 35, was among African Americans who believe that inner-city students would benefit from a breakup.

“This district is too huge,” he said. “Smaller districts would mean that officials would be closer to their schools, and have a better understanding of inner-city kids and their issues. And teachers would get more support from a local black superintendent.”

It is unclear whether the district’s proposal to create mini-districts, which the board will vote on today, will dampen enthusiasm for a breakup.

The poll also revealed that a large majority of people in general, and African Americans in particular, believed that real change in the school system is possible.

Sales manager Leslie Johnson, 41, of Venice said, “There’s a lot of hope out there--what else can you do?

“There will be change, I’m sure of it,” she said. “But the good guys have a long way to go. It will take strong leadership on the part of the school board, and police. Our schools are war zones.”

“When it comes to schools, the poor have no other recourse than to believe that change can come to public schools,” said education consultant Owen Knox, a former assistant superintendent with Los Angeles Unified.

And poll respondents said that race should not be a consideration in selecting the superintendent to lead that change.

Poll respondent Jackie Oregel, 36, of Granada Hills, who has two children in public elementary schools, said, “I don’t think race is at all important. There’s a lot of Latino kids in L.A. Unified. But that doesn’t mean the superintendent should be Latino or Japanese, German or anything else. The question is this: Is he or she qualified for the job?”

The poll drew geographically disparate reactions toward the problem-plagued Belmont Learning Complex, which was abandoned by the Board of Education in January. The project was being built on top of an old oil field laden with potentially volatile chemicals.

The strongest support for completing the school was found in the San Fernando Valley, where 46% favored restarting the project and 38% favored stopping it.

Some explanation for their support comes from follow-up interviews with poll respondents who live in the San Fernando Valley. Some expressed concerns that stopping the $175-million project would mean having to bus 5,000 Belmont High School students elsewhere, including already overcrowded Valley campuses.

“We don’t have room for those kids in the Valley,” said Sebastian Massa, 54, a poll respondent in North Hollywood. “On the other hand, Belmont is there and it’s in progress and any problems with it could be remedied.”

Darlene Zaun, 56, also of North Hollywood, agreed.

“They always seem to bus kids from down there up to us,” she said. “But we have enough kids of our own. Besides, they have gangs in Los Angeles. We do too. But their gangs seem to be a little more violent.”

Most Say Teachers Need Higher Pay

Although union leaders were heartened that most residents feel teachers are paid too little, they were dismayed by other findings. Half of residents said they approve of merit pay.

In a separate question, 43% said they believe merit pay is necessary to make sure schools are accountable for the results of their teachers’ performance. Forty-one percent said it is unfair to tie teacher pay to student test scores because so many other factors can affect performance.

“Everybody agrees that teachers need a whole lot more money,” said Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles. “And we think the more people really know about pay for performance schemes, the less likely they are to support them.”

Forty-four percent of residents had an unfavorable impression of the school board while only 23% had a favorable impression. The teachers union fared somewhat better with 34% of residents holding a favorable impression and 23% with an unfavorable impression.

Although the school board and interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines have initiated a number of changes in the last several months, 51% of residents said the school district has stayed the same and 6% said it has gotten worse under their direction. Among parents, 67% said the district had stayed the same and 7% said it had gotten worse.

“I couldn’t have worked any harder, or listened any more,” Cortines said.

“I’ve kept my eye on the mission: improving education for all children,” he said. “I want L.A. Unified to be a viable choice for parents. That’s my greatest wish. But it can’t be done overnight.”

As the state places increasing importance on standardized test results, 54% of parents said they believe grades and teacher evaluations are better indicators of a child’s progress in school than such tests. Only 19% of parents thought test scores were better while 25% thought the two methods were of equal value.

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Views on Schools

Is real change possible in the L.A. public schools, or are they so troubled that it would be impossible to improve them? (asked of all respondents living in the district)