LAUSD CHALKS UP ROUND JUDGE LIFTS CONSENT DECREE, CITING BETTER TEACHER MIX.

Byline: Naush Boghossian Staff Writer

Los Angeles Unified's aggressive efforts to staff all 750 of its schools with experienced, qualified teachers persuaded a judge Monday to lift a consent decree imposed 15 years ago.

The nation's second-largest district has spent $11 million annually to comply with the consent decree, which was issued in 1991 in response to a lawsuit claiming that some schools - particularly in the inner city - suffered academically because they had disproportionately high numbers of inexperienced teachers and administrators.

The consent decree required the district to allocate additional money for schools where teacher salaries fell below the district average. The money was spent on professional development and other support services.

This reflects the progress we have made," Superintendent Roy Romer said of Superior Court Judge Joanne O'Donnell's refusal to extend the consent decree five more years.

"It now gives us the ability to focus our resources at schools where student performance indicates they really need help."

Attorney Lew Hollman, who represented the five parents who filed suit, said there was a "good chance" they would appeal the judge's decision.

"We were pretty disappointed in the decision, because there's still a great deal of disparity between the number of qualified, properly credentialed teachers in different parts of the school district, and that's what the decree was intended to address," Hollman said.

District officials said they had worked hard to boost their hiring and placement practices, as well as spending more money to provide professional development at schools in disadvantaged areas.

"Over the last four years, we've changed the recruiting and got an equal percentage of fully credentialed teachers all over the district," said Deborah Hirsh, the LAUSD's chief human-resources officer.

"No less than 98 percent of the teachers in any local district are either fully credentialed or highly qualified interns and because we distributed teachers well.

"That's one of the main reasons the judge ruled that we no longer have to be under this consent decree."

LAUSD officials said they have taken significant steps to have more qualified teachers on all their campuses.

Officials said that in 2002, more than 7,000 teachers were working with emergency permits - which bypass state licensing requirements - most of them assigned to the district's hardest-to-staff campuses in the poorest areas.

Now, nearly 93 percent of the district's 34,610 teachers are fully credentialed and fewer than 500 hold emergency permits.

The average teacher salary in the LAUSD is about $58,000.

Despite the LAUSD's efforts to put more qualified teachers in the lowest-performing, poorest and highest minority schools, the district's most-experienced teachers still work predominantly in schools serving affluent white students, according to a report released in September by Education Trust-West, an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase student achievement.

Russlynn Ali, executive director of Education Trust-West, said it is difficult to gauge the LAUSD's success because of the subjective definition of "qualified" teacher.

What still remains true, she said, is that more experienced, better-educated teachers are clustered in schools serving the more-advantaged kids, while novice teachers tend to be assigned to campuses with poor and minority students.

Ali said the group's research shows that Los Angeles provides students in minority and poor areas with less than their fair share of qualified teachers.

Ali said the district should continue targeting resources at its underserved schools.

"It's the job of the district to make sure students and teachers get the services they need, but they need to go further than the consent decree allowed."

Hirsch acknowledged that the district still needs to work toward teacher-experience equity, particularly at the secondary levels.

The average teacher has 10.3 years' experience in all of the LAUSD's eight local districts, except No. 7, which covers South L.A., where the average is 8.2 years, officials said.

"We have isolated situations that are not perfect," Hirsh said. "At the secondary schools we struggle with math, science and special education and we're working on the next school year to make sure the hardest-to-staff schools get their fair share right off the get-go."

The LAUSD's priority staffing program will focus on getting new teachers settled to help curb the high turnover rate at underperforming, poorer schools.

But, the district may feel like it has its hands tied in its efforts to expand the changing pattern of teacher distribution due to bargaining agreements, Ali said.

Seniority provisions in teacher contracts throughout the state give tenured teachers the option of requesting a transfer to any school of their choice.

But A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said any argument based on seniority provisions assumes that the best teachers are the most experienced.

"The more veteran or senior teachers are not by definition the better or best teachers," Duffy said.

In order to ensure the best teachers are assigned to the hardest-to-staff schools, Duffy said, the district must create a fair and objective evaluation system. It also needs to guarantee school safety, along with administrative support for teachers, especially in dealing with disruptive students.

"Without that, you can offer the best teachers in the world $10,000 more a year and they're not going to schools that are unsafe and have no administrative backup," he said.

District officials vowed they will continue the work of allocating resources to those schools where they're critically needed - but what has changed is the formula to determine which schools are in most need.

naush.boghossian(at)dailynews.com

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