"Stand and Deliver" LA Garfield High among 12 schools available to outside bidder

Los Angeles Times Blog
September 25, 2009 | 4:31 pm

26Dems editorial note: Putting "failing" schools up for hostile takeover bids by private non-profit and for profit corporations is the next step in a massive effort to reform public schools, already underway in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland. Public schools are set up for failure as more charter and private schools gobble up a dwindling tax base. According to plan, private corporations are poised to take over the public school system. Privatization means less transparency in governance and financing. Parents are being conditioned and organized at Parent University and Parents Union in Los Angeles to become a part of a "grassroots" astroturf corporate managed and funded campaign to demand a change that will rob them of their power to influence the direction of their child's education. The aims of school privatization are not being discussed in mainstream media. Arizona's public schools have taken a huge budgetary hit this year thanks to corporate friendly Republicans. How long will it be before we see corporate PR managed"tea party" parent groups demanding that "failing" public schools in Arizona be put up on the hostile auction block?

Be sure to read the companion article that follows Say you want a revolution?: Parents Revolution, ‘Astro turf’ organizations and the privatization of public schools'


Garfield High, which became nationally known as the real-life setting for the film “Stand and Deliver,” will be among the first group of local schools eligible for takeover because of persistent academic failure, a high-level district source has told The Times.

Garfield’s selection means that the nation’s second-largest school system will invite bidders — from inside and outside of the district — to run the East Los Angeles campus of 4,600 students. This “request-for-proposal” process could apply to more than 250 schools under a Board of Education resolution passed last month, but the initial set of schools will number 12, sources said.

Included are Jefferson High in Central-Alameda, Lincoln High in Lincoln Heights, Burbank Middle School in Highland Park and Maywood Academy High in the southeast L.A. County city of Maywood.

[UPDATED: In addition to the schools named above, the following schools also are on the list: Gardena High in Gardena, San Pedro High in San Pedro, San Fernando Middle School, Carver Middle School in South Park, Griffith Joyner Elementary in Watts, Hillcrest Elementary in Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw, Hyde Park Elementary in Hyde Park.]

Sources supplied the information on a confidential basis because they did not have permission to disclose it. In an interview Thursday, district Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he would release the list today, but only after notifying senior officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Garfield High, which for decades has served a largely immigrant population east of downtown, reached its recent high-water mark in the 1980s, when math teacher Jaime Escalante built a famed calculus program that became the subject of a book and subsequent movie. Under his leadership, dozens of students passed the Advanced Placement calculus test every year, a rare feat even at the nation’s elite high school

Last year, only 5% of Garfield students tested as proficient in any math class. The school qualified for possible takeover as one of more than 250 that had consistently failed to meet federal benchmarks and thus was designated as falling into “Program Improvement” status. The board resolution applied to any school with that designation for three or more years.

Cortines later refined the criteria. “Focus” schools, as he called them, would have to meet additional criteria: Less than 21% of students proficient in math or English and schoolwide improvement of less than 10 points on the state’s Academic Performance Index, which is largely based on standardized test scores. In addition, high schools would have a dropout rate greater than 10%.

Garfield qualified easily. Moreover, the school has the lowest rank, 1 of 10, when compared with schools statewide. But that does not make Garfield’s selection noncontroversial or uncontestable.

When compared with schools that serve similar students, Garfield rates a 6 of 10, which puts it in the upper half of state schools by that yardstick. An independently operated charter school, for example, would be eligible for renewal if it achieved a 4 of 10 in this category. Charter schools are exempt from some rules governing traditional schools, including adherence to the district’s union contracts.

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