San Diego Schools Set a New Agenda After Backlash

Alan D. Bersin, the former superintendent of San Diego’s schools, answers questions in 2005 after being named California’s secretary of education by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The reforms he promoted in San Diego drew national attention but achieved a mixed record of success.

—Damian Dovarganes/AP-File

District Takes Opposite Tack

By Sarah D. Sparks

Ten years after the San Diego school district gained national attention for its short-lived “Blueprint for Student Success,” a crowd of district officials last week rolled out a new improvement plan that is almost the opposite of its controversial predecessor.

The city’s blueprint reforms —largely dismantled after a charismatic and aggressive superintendent, Alan D. Bersin, left in 2005—were among the most closely watched and hotly debated of the early years of the No Child Left Behind Act.

And some experts say the story of the demise of the blueprint campaign and the rise of San Diego’s new improvement effort may hold lessons for advocates of similar wholesale interventions using federal Race to the Top and...