EDITORIAL SIGNS OF PROGRESS IMPROVED TEST SCORES ARE A CREDIT TO LAUSD AND ENGLISH IMMERSION.SCORE another point for the Los Angeles Unified School District The Los Angeles Unified School District (the "LAUSD") is the largest (in terms of number of students) public school system in California and the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. and to voters who demanded that all children be taught primarily in English. After decades of a can't-do spirit and nothing but excuses and mediocrity, the LAUSD LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District (Los Angeles, CA) appears to be rounding the corner. Superintendent Roy Romer Roy R. Romer (born October 31, 1928 in Garden City, Kansas, United States) was the 39th governor of Colorado and served as the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District from 2001 to 2006. has aggressively tackled overcrowding overcrowding overcrowding of animal accommodation. Many countries now publish codes of practice which define what the appropriate volumetric allowances should be for each species of animal when they are housed indoors. Breaches of these codes is overcrowding. with the nation's largest school construction program. Test scores are up in elementary schools. And now, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the latest numbers, English-language learners are making vast strides toward fluency. The district surely still has a ways to go, but its progress is unmistakable - and impressive. Three years ago, a mere 16 percent of the LAUSD's English-language learners were considered proficient in English. Last year that number jumped to 29 percent, and this year it's up to 42 percent, just 1 point shy of the statewide average. Those numbers exceed gains made across California, which is due in part to the fact that the LAUSD had more ground to make up, as well as the district's efforts at beefing up teacher training and curricula. But the statewide increase points to another key factor in the progress: The end of bilingual education bilingual education, the sanctioned use of more than one language in U.S. education. The Bilingual Education Act (1968), combined with a Supreme Court decision (1974) mandating help for students with limited English proficiency, requires instruction in the native , which California voters demanded in a 1998 referendum. As a concept, bilingual education had great promise, but in application, it failed miserably. And after decades of the education establishment's inability to reform the broken bilingual system, voters took matters into their own hands. Now students are finally catching up under the immersion regimen that the education establishment bitterly opposed. And the results have not only improved English-proficiency scores, but no doubt also played a role in the overall improvement of standardized test scores. As Los Angeles school The Los Angeles School of Urbanism is an academic movement emerged during the mid-1980s, loosely based at the University of Southern California and UCLA, that poses a challenge to the dominant Chicago School of Urbanism. board President Jose Huizar put it, ``English- language learners make up 40 percent of our students. If they succeed, the LAUSD succeeds.'' And make no mistake about it: On several different levels, the LAUSD is showing definite signs of success. |
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