A Radical Approach to Big City Schools

LOS ANGELES -- After three terms as Colorado's governor and a stint herding cats -- he was Democratic Party chairman -- Roy Romer was 71. A mountain climber who had scaled the Matterhorn, and a glutton for punishment, he decided it was time for "a hard job." He found one.

Note the ethnic breakdown of the LA Schools: "The polyglot district's students are 72 percent Hispanic, 12 percent African American, 9 percent white. Two-thirds of the students in kindergarten through third grade come from homes in which English is not the first language."

No wonder Juan can't read.

72% Hispanic, that's tremendous. Where are all the white kids? In private schools, or are there no more white/non-hispanics in LA?

Many whites are moving out. The rest have their kids in private schools. Standards keep dropping. Schools with low achievement scores complain bitterly that ranking schools by achievement hurts their students' self-esteem. Some schools, I'm told, post the Mexican flag rather than the American one.

Really interesting. How much of the overcrowding is due to illegal immigrants?

I like some of these ideas:

The school district's dramatic improvement in elementary school scores is the result of a rigorous curriculum featuring instruction in phonics. Plus what Romer calls "really trained teachers -- trained after they leave school," trained especially in how to teach reading. Plus teaching coaches in classrooms....Tests developed by the Educational Testing Service...return results in 24 hours, revealing what homework is needed and shaping classroom instruction for each child during the subsequent 10 weeks.
To those who criticize "teaching to the test," Romer responds: That is what flight schools do. Because we take flying seriously. He likens testing throughout the school year to what many football teams now do by studying photos during the game, when diagnosis is immediately useful.
...Romer thinks it is unwise to base teachers' pay on length of service plus post-B.A. credentials rather than on students' cognitive accomplishments plus peer review by other teachers.

According to the article, they've had a dramatic improvement at the elementary school level.

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