Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Walters: Brown’s Big School Reform Falls Short
dan_walters
By Dan Walters, CalMatters Commentary
Published 5 years ago on
March 15, 2020

Share

Los Angeles Unified is the state’s largest school district and the vast majority of its 400,000-plus students are poor, non-white and/or not completely fluent in English.
It is, in other words, precisely what former Gov. Jerry Brown had in mind when he and the Legislature overhauled school districts’ finances, giving them more money to close the stubborn “achievement gap” that has long separated disadvantaged students from their more privileged, English-speaking classmates.


Dan Walters
Opinion
However, in enacting the Local Control Funding Formula seven years ago, Brown also insisted that the money flow with very few strings attached, saying he trusted local educators and school boards to spend it effectively. He called it “subsidiarity.”
That hands-off attitude didn’t sit well with education reformers and civil rights advocates who worried that the extra money wouldn’t be concentrated on “high-needs” students and Los Angeles Unified, because of its size and makeup, was a major arena for the conflicts over LCFF.
At one point, critics persuaded the state Department of Education that LAUSD had diverted hundreds of millions of LCFF dollars away from the targeted kids, but the state then allowed it to simply change the coding on the disputed funds to make them legal.
The district has also been undergoing institutional turmoil over the last decade — hyper-political battles over school board elections, pitting the teachers union against charter school advocates, and a revolving door of superintendents.

Failure to Substantially Close the Achievement Gap

Brown has departed from the governorship and LCFF has been in place long enough for some scholarly examination of how it’s really working. Last week, a research team headed by Bruce Fuller, a veteran education analyst at UC-Berkeley, released a report on how the program has affected LAUSD’s high-schoolers.
The district did not fare well.
During the first five years of LCFF, declining enrollment and a surge of state funds — more than $1 billion a year — increased the district’s per-pupil spending from $8,657 a year to $11,231, and much of it found its way into LA Unified’s high schools.
“Most heartening, kids’ learning on average improved measurably in high schools,” Bruce Fuller said in a statement as the report was published. “But somewhat greater progress was made by students from better-off homes or schools in middle-class areas. The new funding appeared to bring far less benefit to the most disadvantaged groups.”
One factor in LCFF’s failure to substantially close the achievement gap, the researchers found, is that while its new funds allowed the district to hire more teachers, schools with the highest proportions of at-risk kids tended to get the least experienced teachers.

Newsom Appears to Take a More Hands-On Approach

“Despite Sacramento’s best intentions, this surge in school funding failed to budge such wide inequities in which kids benefit most from L.A. schools,” Fuller said in his statement. “Going forward, the state might ensure that funding gains reach intended students, and that principals become mindful of how fresh resources are distributed within their schools.”
The findings did not please Michael Kirst, the Stanford University professor who persuaded Brown to sponsor LCFF and served as president of the state school board during its implementation.
Kirst, who participated in Fuller’s webinar on the study, complained that it didn’t include all factors affecting LA Unified’s education record and argued that LCFF needs more time to prove its worth.
“We need to stay the course,” Kirst advised.
Brown’s successor, Gavin Newsom, appears to take a more hands-on approach and has, among other things, proposed a system to catalog education outcomes in detail, which will provide a more complete database for determining whether LCFF is a success or an expensive failure.
CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.
[activecampaign form=31]

DON'T MISS

Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work.

DON'T MISS

Navy Crew Members Eject From Their Jet Before It Crashes off the San Diego Coast

DON'T MISS

Kellen Moore Exits Eagles to Become Saints Head Coach

DON'T MISS

The Deadly Truth: Record Number of Journalists Killed in 2024

DON'T MISS

CHP K-9 Seizes 50 Pounds of Illicit Mushrooms in Fresno County

DON'T MISS

Saint Agnes to Expand Teaching for Clovis Med School Students

DON'T MISS

Belarus Releases 3 People, Including an American and a Jailed Journalist

DON'T MISS

Need Down Payment Help? Fresno Housing Has $25K for First-Time Homebuyers

DON'T MISS

Pentagon’s New Media Rotation Program Boots NPR, NY Times, NBC News

DON'T MISS

Bredefeld Wants Less Scrutiny for Supervisors’ Discretionary Budget. Pacheco Calls It ‘Ironic.’

UP NEXT

The Deadly Truth: Record Number of Journalists Killed in 2024

UP NEXT

Will ‘Too Many Cooks’ Complicate LA’s Recovery From Deadly Fires?

UP NEXT

I Miss the Old Kanye, Not This Antisemitic Crashout

UP NEXT

This Isn’t the Donald Trump America Elected

UP NEXT

Trump Targets Troubled CA Bullet Train Project. Will He Kill It, Too?

UP NEXT

CA School Test Scores Trail Those of States Newsom Considers Culturally Backward

UP NEXT

A Tale of Two Local Districts: Implementing the CA Classroom Cell Phone Ban

UP NEXT

A Presidency That’s Off the Rails. It Took Only Two Weeks.

UP NEXT

DEI Will Not Be Missed in the Military

UP NEXT

Trump Is Going Woke on Energy

The Deadly Truth: Record Number of Journalists Killed in 2024

1 hour ago

CHP K-9 Seizes 50 Pounds of Illicit Mushrooms in Fresno County

2 hours ago

Saint Agnes to Expand Teaching for Clovis Med School Students

2 hours ago

Belarus Releases 3 People, Including an American and a Jailed Journalist

2 hours ago

Need Down Payment Help? Fresno Housing Has $25K for First-Time Homebuyers

2 hours ago

Pentagon’s New Media Rotation Program Boots NPR, NY Times, NBC News

2 hours ago

Bredefeld Wants Less Scrutiny for Supervisors’ Discretionary Budget. Pacheco Calls It ‘Ironic.’

2 hours ago

Senate Confirms Gabbard as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence

4 hours ago

President Trump and Putin Have Agreed to Start Negotiations to End the Ukraine War

4 hours ago

Google Calendar Users No Longer See Default Entries for Events Like Pride, Black History Month

4 hours ago

Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work.

Whatever you choose to call it, Elon Musk has captured the inner workings of the U.S. government on President Donald Trump’s behalf. His ope...

7 seconds ago

Elon Musk
8 seconds ago

Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work.

U.S. Navy boats work along the shore near Shelter Island after a U.S. Navy plane crashed into the San Diego Bay, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025, in San Diego. (AP/Denis Poroy)
6 minutes ago

Navy Crew Members Eject From Their Jet Before It Crashes off the San Diego Coast

Kellen Moore
26 minutes ago

Kellen Moore Exits Eagles to Become Saints Head Coach

1 hour ago

The Deadly Truth: Record Number of Journalists Killed in 2024

A CHP K-9 seized 50 pounds of illicit mushrooms worth $80,000 during a traffic stop on I-5 in Fresno County, leading to the arrest of Phillip Yoon, 35, of Hayward. (CHP)
2 hours ago

CHP K-9 Seizes 50 Pounds of Illicit Mushrooms in Fresno County

2 hours ago

Saint Agnes to Expand Teaching for Clovis Med School Students

2 hours ago

Belarus Releases 3 People, Including an American and a Jailed Journalist

2 hours ago

Need Down Payment Help? Fresno Housing Has $25K for First-Time Homebuyers

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend