A Half-Charter School District for L.A.?
Eli Broad made his fortune in construction and real estate. But he's building a legacy as a philanthropist and an education reformer. In September, the Broad, a $140 million museum of contemporary art, opened in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of a revitalizing Grand Avenue and 2nd Street, across from the Walt Disney Concert Hall. That same month, the Los Angeles Times published a leaked memo detailing Broad's proposal to revitalize L.A.'s sclerotic public school system. Working under the auspices of his family foundation, Broad would gather some of the biggest names in private philanthropy—Gates, Walton, Ahmanson, Bloomberg, Annenberg, and Hewlett, as well as David Geffen, Kirk Kerkorian, and Elon Musk—to open 260 new charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District over an eight-year period, with an enrollment goal of at least 130,000 students. The memo discusses how to raise $490 million to pay for the effort, which includes recruiting teachers, acquiring real estate, providing outreach to parents, and navigating political battles. If the octogenarian Broad succeeds, half of L.A. Unified's schools would be charters by the mid-2020s.
Naturally, L.A.'s education establishment detests the idea. The LAUSD board's president, Steve Zimmer, denounced Broad's plan as "a strategy to bring down LAUSD." In November, board member Scott Schmerelson pushed a resolution announcing the board's opposition to the Broad Foundation's plan by name. Later, Schmerelson changed the language to say the board opposed any "external initiatives that seek to reduce public education to an educational marketplace and our children to market shares while not investing in District-wide programs and strategies that benefit every student." As an L.A. Times editorial pointed out, by that standard, "the board would have to oppose many of its own programs—magnet schools, programs to teach students fluency in English and alternative schools for students with chronic behavioral problems." (In response, Broad's new educational nonprofit expanded its proposal to support traditional public schools, including pilots, magnets, and other high-performing schools that serve low-income children.)
posted by Whitney Tilson at 5:35 AM
<< Home