EDITORIAL THE CHARTER LIFELINE.WHILE the school board and its admiral rearrange re·ar·range tr.v. re·ar·ranged, re·ar·rang·ing, re·ar·rang·es To change the arrangement of. re deck chairs aboard the good ship LAUSD LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District (Los Angeles, CA) , passengers are heading for the lifeboats. There are 20 new charter schools in 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. this fall -- proof that many parents don't plan to wait and see whether the district will right its course. L.A.'s new charter schools make up nearly a third of 65 new ones statewide, bringing the totals to 103 in the LAUSD and more than 600 throughout California. These schools are succeeding by encouraging innovation and parental involvement. They're also providing competition to the public-school establishment, which has the establishmentarians concerned. Chief among them is West Valley school board member Jon Lauritzen, who earlier this year tried and failed to impose a moratorium A suspension of activity or an authorized period of delay or waiting. A moratorium is sometimes agreed upon by the interested parties, or it may be authorized or imposed by operation of law. on the creation of new charters within the LAUSD. Lauritzen rejects the comparison of charters to traditional public schools, saying: ``I think it's basically unfair to compare an entity that is able to take their entire budget and focus it entirely on their own schools. (Charters) have some real advantages over our schools in the flexibility of actually providing the type of education that a particular community wants, whereas we are trying to provide a curriculum that works for everyone all across the school district.'' But that's the point. Charters work because, unlike the LAUSD behemoth behemoth (bē`hĭmŏth, bĭhē`–) [Heb.,=plural of beast], large, fanciful primeval monster, like Leviathan, evoking the hippopotamus mentioned in the Book of Job. , they can spend their budgets primarily on classroom needs. They can tailor their curricula to their student bodies, instead of trying to force one-size-fits-all solutions. And they have to compete for students, which means they must succeed, because when they don't, they go out of business. It's important to draw comparisons between charters and traditional public schools because these comparisons give us a clue Give Us a Clue is a televised version of charades hosted at different times by Michael Aspel 1979–1983 and Michael Parkinson 1984–1992, with two teams: one captained by Lionel Blair and the other by Una Stubbs. as to what works and what doesn't. And rather than downplaying the success of charter schools, Lauritzen and the rest of the board ought to try emulating them. Because if we learned from their examples, charters -- which have tossed a lifeline life·line n. 1. a. An anchored line thrown as a support to someone falling or drowning. b. A line shot to a ship in distress. c. A line used to raise and lower deep-sea divers. 2. to desperate parents and kids -- could save the district, too. CAPTION(S): box Box: Daily News Endorsements To Date |
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