FIXING OUR SCHOOLS; LAUSD STRUGGLES WITH ACCOUNTABILITY.

Byline: Terri Hardy Daily News Staff Writer

Nearly everyone agrees there is a simple, dominant reason Los Angeles schools are broken: Teachers and administrators are not being held accountable for student achievement.

Even as test scores for LAUSD students remain far below national and state averages, the Board of Education and unions are negotiating to raise salaries again without fulfilling their agreement to achieve accountability rules under the contract negotiated just a year ago.

Across the nation, other school districts including those in Texas and Philadelphia have found ways to make teachers and administrators responsible for improving student achievement, but the Los Angeles Unified School District is lagging far behind.

``Students are not achieving,'' said Bobbi Farrell, president of the 31st Parent Teacher Student Association and member of a district task force researching accountability policies. ``The time has come to look at ourselves and figure out how to improve.''

Beyond accountability, the sprawling Los Angeles school system - the nation's second largest - is struggling with how to involve more parents and the community, how to give campuses more authority and flexibility to tailor curriculums, and how to address the challenge of preparing children before they enter school.

The struggle goes beyond the LAUSD.

``Everywhere across the country, people are in a crucial struggle to find what can be done to help schools and students doing poorly - California is behind the curve,'' said Gary Hart, co-director for the Institute for Education Reform in Sacramento.

``People realize that the economic prosperity for the country is dependent on an educated work force. The pressure is there to do something about it.''

Los Angeles' efforts to establish accountability measures so far have bogged down in finger-pointing between the school board and unions. They cannot even agree on what constitutes accountability.

A year ago, the LAUSD thought it was well on the way to establishing a plan. Teachers and other employees agreed to work together to come up with a way to link salary to student achievement in return for a 10 percent raise over three years.

Today, there is still no plan, and the unions want another raise.

Day Higuchi, president of the powerful United Teachers Los Angeles, said he believes accountability has nothing to do with coupling pay and student performance. Its main component, Higuchi said, is setting up a system where failing teachers are evaluated and supported by a peer review team.

Doing anything more, Higuchi said, is unfair.

``There is no measurement device that works, that takes into account all variables and provides an accurate account of a teacher's performance,'' Higuchi said.

Even school board members say they feel betrayed.

``We operated on good faith, but they backed away from their promises,'' said Victoria Castro, president of the Board of Education, who last week voted in the minority against reopening negotiations.

``Our largeness works well for us often. In this case it works against us,'' Castro said. ``To be successful, you have to include everyone and have them buy into the plan.''

No doubt such radical changes present an enormous challenge in the nation's second-largest school district, with 910 schools and centers that stretch from West Hills to San Pedro, with 33,000 teachers and 690,000 students.

The struggle over the past year has met with some success, including the formation of a task force and board committee to search the nation for plans that work.

But even though accountability is this year's buzzword for educators, Los Angeles Unified and its unions have done little to implement the concept.

Consider:

The Accountability Task Force failed to turn in its research and recommendations by its August deadline, causing board member David Tokofsky to ask, ``Where's the accountability for the Accountability Task Force?''

Because task force recommendations were not available, board members had no concrete proposals to use in negotiating with the unions for pay hikes. Board members were forced to hastily craft a few provisions, prompting Castro to note that a crucial opportunity to implement meaningful reform was missed.

Superintendent Ruben Zacarias allowed his predecessor's union-approved plan for accountability to expire. It would have allowed intervention teams to evaluate and provide support for failing schools.

Other LAUSD employee unions are not blameless. All nine bargaining units that got raises last year and promised accountability plans never provided them.

The head of United Teachers Los Angeles, who pledged at a news conference last year that a proposal would be completed by January, blames the delay on the district.

Zacarias was so preoccupied in his first year that ``no one could talk to him about anything,'' Higuchi said. He added that an accountability plan is nearly ready to present to the union's board for approval.

Even so, Higuchi has recognized the handwriting on the wall. In Higuchi's recent state of the union address printed in a newsletter, he said: ``Accountability is not going to go away. It will either come from us or be done to us. Let's take charge!''

LAUSD's options

Recommendations for reform in the LAUSD by the Accountability Task Force are expected to reach the superintendent by Oct. 31, said Assistant Superintendent Gordon Wohlers.

For some members of the LAUSD's Accountability Task Force, accountability goes beyond choosing between incentives and penalties for teachers.

Ted Mitchell, a task force member who is the vice president for education at the Getty Trust, said he is pushing for annual report cards on each school's performance to be published.

``The best accountability plans involve parents and the community - report cards provide vital information for people to get involved,'' said Mitchell, who also serves as senior education adviser to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.

The PTSA's Farrell said parents' No. 1 desire is more communication with schools.

``Parents want to hear from the teacher often, not just when their child is not doing well,'' Farrell said. ``Any accountability plan must require teachers to share expectations with parents and students.''

Castro is frustrated that the task forces' well-planned research was not included in the accountability proposal the board gave to the teachers union.

``Several people were advising the board to take their time, including myself. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.''

Accountability by example

There are 32 states and 34 large urban districts that have accountability systems based, in part, on test scores.

LAUSD might be the first urban school district to try to link pay to student achievement, said Paul Hood, director of planning and evaluation for WestEd, an educational research, development and service firm based in San Francisco.

The reason: strong unions that resist such change.

``Teachers unions argue that when you begin to pay teachers differently you create problems,'' Hood said. ``Those problems don't exist in the commercial world, where employees are paid at different levels, based on their work.''

Still, many states and large districts already have implemented get-tough reform plans.

Many educational experts agree that accountability systems that work start with standards, or academic expectations for students at each grade level. Over the past year, California adopted standards for core academic subjects: language arts, mathematics, science and social science.

The next step is deciding how to measure school performance under those standards. This year, the Stanford 9 national standardized test was given to all California students in grades two through 11. Some critics, however, believe those scores are not representative of what children know and what teachers teach.

Educators are split on the subsequent phase, consequences.

Texas school officials said they've seen a dramatic turnaround just by publishing a list of poorly performing schools. But other school systems said it's crucial to take a carrot-and-stick approach, rewarding schools that do well and punishing those that do not.

The Philadelphia Board of Education agreed to cut the superintendent's salary if he could not meet certain goals, such as developing a districtwide training system for all employees.

``We hired the superintendent to implement a top-to-bottom reform,'' said Philadelphia schools spokeswoman Pam Weddington.

So far, it has worked. Schools are evaluated on several indicators, including test scores, graduation and attendance rates. Of the 260 schools, 60 percent have exceeded their goals, Weddington said.

MONDAY: Superintendent Ruben Zacarias' plan for reform.

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Photo

PHOTO Day Higuchi, right, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, rallies educators in support of pay raises Tuesday. The district's unions agreed last year to work with the school board to devise a method of linking salaries to student achievement in return for a 10 percent raise over three years. But the unions still have not come up with a plan.

Phil McCarten/Daily News