Truth is, parents and taxpayers—to say nothing of thousands of hard-working teachers—have plenty to gripe about. L.A. Unified is a picture of dysfunction, bureaucratic bloat, and massive waste. The second-largest school district in the United States, LAUSD has a $7 billion budget and enrolls (\”educates\” isn’t quite the word) around 600,000 students. The district is home to both the glistening, half-billion-dollar Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex, opened last year on the former site of the Ambassador Hotel (where Kennedy was assassinated in 1968), and Locke High School, one of the worst-performing high schools in California. Only 55 percent of LAUSD students graduate from high school after four years. The district is hindered, in large part, by its 350-page contract with United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), which enshrines seniority over quality and leaves younger, tatealented teachers most vulnerable to pink slips. Yet as Los Angeles education blogger Anthony Krinsky notes, despite three consecutive years of layoffs, \”we have more teachers per student than we had 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and 20 years ago.\” For all of the manpower, student performance remains stagnant.
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