School & District Management

Power Shift on L.A. Schools Called Complex

By Lesli A. Maxwell — September 19, 2006 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has won his hard-fought political battle to gain partial control over Los Angeles’ public schools, but securing meaningful reforms in classrooms is likely to prove far more difficult for the charismatic politician, experts say.

Because the mayor will not have complete control—unlike his counterparts in Boston, Chicago, and New York City—he will have to negotiate with the elected school board, the teachers’ union, and a new council of mayors to embrace his plans for raising student achievement and lowering the high school dropout rate.

“It’s not clear how this arrangement can serve to improve teaching and learning, which is obviously the most central challenge,” said Warren Simmons, the executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, located at Brown University. “Of course, a change in governance is an opportunity to change teaching and learning, but it’s no guarantee.”

Mr. Villaraigosa will share authority with a council of mayors representing the 26 other cities that lie within the boundaries of the Los Angeles Unified district, though he will dominate the panel. His plan, which required the approval of the California legislature, empowers the superintendent to manage most of the contracting, budgeting, and hiring in the 727,000-student district, while keeping the elected school board responsible for setting policy and handling collective bargaining—a concession the mayor made to win support from teachers’ unions.

The arrangement also leaves open the possibility that teachers will have an increased role in making curriculum decisions.

“There is no power for the mayor to impose here,” said Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford University education professor who has studied mayoral control of urban school systems. “What he’s got to work with is a fragmented, unprecedented system that has a high degree of risk. It seems to me that there are going to be ample opportunities for him to be obstructed.”

‘Not Out of the Game’

For one, said Mr. Kirst, school board members—six out of seven of whom vehemently opposed the mayor’s plan—will play a part in selecting the superintendent and retain some say over the district’s budget. Last week, the school board voted to file suit over the plan, challenging, in particular, the direct control the mayor will have over a cluster of low-performing schools.

“They are not out of the game by any means,” Mr. Kirst said of the school board.

Details of the mayor’s proposals for improving schools remained under wraps last week, although Mr. Villaraigosa promised to roll out the specifics soon. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who supports the Democratic mayor on the governance plan, was expected to sign the quasi-takeover legislation this week.

During a visit last week to Washington, where he met with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and several members of Congress, the mayor said the superintendent is the key to his reform agenda.

When asked how he will implement his ideas under the complex management structure, Mayor Villaraigosa said his plan gives the most critical decisionmaking powers to the superintendent. The Los Angeles mayor and the council of mayors have the authority to veto or ratify the selection and termination of the superintendent. That, he insists, is critical for his agenda.

“From the beginning, this proposal was all about ensuring that the superintendent had the powers of a [chief executive officer] to implement the reforms that are necessary to turn around the school district,” he said. “We’ve got that with our plan, and to the extent that I have the power of the veto over who is hired, we will have a superintendent who is responsible for instruction and accountability.”

That may be, said Mr. Simmons of the Annenberg Institute, but the Los Angeles superintendent won’t have the same independence that Joel I. Klein, the mayorally appointed chancellor of the New York City schools, has.

“In this case, the superintendent won’t just answer to the mayor, so that increases the likelihood of political turmoil,” Mr. Simmons said.

Coy about specifics, Mr. Villaraigosa said he would push immediately to address the dropout problem, and would start by finding a way to calculate exactly how many students leave the district without graduating. He has, time and again, cited a series of independent studies that put the district’s graduation rate at no better than 50 percent. District officials, led by Superintendent Roy Romer, have hotly disputed that figure.

More Charters, Tutoring

Mr. Villaraigosa said he would use his influence to make Los Angeles more hospitable to charter schools. And, he said, he will push the district to do a better job of providing free tutoring to children enrolled in schools that have failed to meet testing benchmarks required under the No Child Left Behind Act, a matter the mayor discussed with Ms. Spellings.

What happens to instruction will be at the heart of the mayor’s success, said Russlyn Ali, the executive director of the Education Trust-West, an Oakland, Calif.-based advocacy group that supports increased rigor in high schools for all students.

Ms. Ali, an advocate of the Los Angeles board’s decision last year to change the district’s graduation requirements to match the courses that are required for admission to the University of California and California State University systems, supports the mayor’s new role in schools.

“The graduation requirements will remain in the board’s control, but how the high school curriculum is delivered is a big, big question,” Ms. Ali said.

Most promising, said Ms. Ali, is the mayor’s plan to directly control three of the city’s worst-performing high schools and schools that feed into them.

“This is the opportunity to bring all of his resources to bear in these very high-need schools and the communities they are in,” she said. “That is very exciting.”

A version of this article appeared in the September 20, 2006 edition of Education Week as Power Shift on L.A. Schools Called Complex

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management The Eclipse Is Great for Learning. But It's Tough on School Logistics
A total solar eclipse will cross a large swath of the country on April 8, sparking tough management choices for leaders of the districts in its path.
5 min read
A woman and stands outside with her arm on the back of a boy as they look up at the sky while wearing special paper glasses made for viewing a solar eclipse.
Jackie Johnson and her son Bradley Johnson, 9, watch a partial solar eclipse at the Frost Science Museum on Oct. 14, 2023, in downtown Miami. In 2024, some districts are planning to delay or cancel school on the day of a total eclipse, out of safety concerns.
Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP
School & District Management Opinion A Good Principal Knows When It's Time to Leave
I didn’t leave my job because of burnout; I stepped away from being a school leader because it was in everybody’s best interest.
Matthew Ebert
4 min read
Conceptual illustration of someone handing off a baton to someone else over a completed puzzle.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
School & District Management Principals Tell Politicians on Capitol Hill: We’re Burning Out
Students' mental health top principals' growing list of concerns.
6 min read
People walk outside the U.S Capitol building in Washington, June 9, 2022.
Visitors walk outside the U.S Capitol building in Washington on June 9, 2022.
Patrick Semansky/AP
School & District Management Women Superintendents Experience Bias on the Climb to Leadership
Interpersonal slights and inequities make it hard for women to land the job and stay in it.
3 min read
Woman stands in front of a staircase in different colors. She is about to walk up the stairs. Concept of standing in front of a challenge and finding the right solution and courage to move on.
mikkelwilliam/E+