EDITORIAL YES ON CARSON SCHOOLS.LAST year, the state's Little Hoover Commission Hoover Commission (1947–49, 1953–55) Advisory body headed by former Pres. Herbert Hoover to examine the organization of the U.S. executive branch. The first commission, officially titled the Commission on Organization of the U.S. pointedly observed that 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. is ``a disturbingly dysfunctional organization - too large to serve its students.'' That statement sums up exactly why so many people in Carson in south Los Angeles South Los Angeles is the official name for a large geographic and cultural area lying to the southwest and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, California. The area was formerly called South Central Los Angeles, and is still sometimes called South Central. County want to break free of the LAUSD's clutches and start their own district. Tuesday, Carson voters will get to decide on Measure D, which, if passed, would create an independent Carson Unified School District A unified school district is a school district which includes both primary school (kindergarten through middle school or junior high) and high school (grades 9-12). In Illinois, these districts are called unit school districts. . The Daily News endorses a yes vote. Supporters of the measure joke that the D stands for David, because they are up against a political Goliath - United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that's poured tens of thousands of dollars into the campaign to stop their grass-roots movement. They also face the LAUSD LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District (Los Angeles, CA) bureaucracy, which has tried to hold the measure hostage by threatening to bar Carson kids from attending district magnet schools if it passes. These are formidable foes, but Carson voters must not be deterred. They know that their community has long been underserved by the LAUSD bureaucracy. They can see that test scores are higher in Torrance - the last district to break away from the LAUSD - than in their own schools. When it comes to public bureaucracies, bigger is worse, and bureaucracies don't get much bigger or worse than the LAUSD. Local control is no silver bullet No Silver Bullet - essence and accidents of software engineering is a well-known paper on software engineering written by Fred Brooks in 1986. Brooks argues that there will be no more technologies or practices that will serve as "silver bullets" and create a twofold , but it's Carson's best hope for getting a school board that's responsive to its needs and where its people's voices will be heard. Measure D is too great an opportunity for Carson to pass up. |
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