Cadets at Reseda High’s Police Academy Magnet. (Credit: LAUSD)

The application period began Tuesday for LA Unified’s popular magnet schools and centers, which next fall will add nearly a dozen new options for families seeking a specialized education.

Applications will be accepted online and by mail until 5 p.m. Nov. 10 for one of the 225 themed magnets, which will have an estimated 87,000 available seats for the 2017-18 school year.

Programs known as STEM or STEAM – science, technology, engineering, arts and math – are also becoming increasingly popular. Eight of the 11 new programs for next fall are designated as STEAM programs, while Angeles Mesa Elementary School created a variation of the STEAM theme dubbed DREAMS – design, research, engineering, arts, math and science.

Also opening next fall is the district’s third Center for Enriched Studies, a rigorous instructional program that emphasizes critical and creative thinking. Currently under construction in Maywood, the 1,400-student span school will open with grades 6-11 and will add a 12^th grade the following year. The $78-million school will feature a state-of-the-art library, music and dance studios, an outdoor amphitheater and a wellness center.

• Read the full article and access the application at LAUSD.net. 

• Magnet schools make up more than a third of the LA Unified schools eligible for new grants from Great Public Schools Now, a new KPCC analysis shows.

• Read more about magnet schools from LA School Report. 

]]> https://www.laschoolreport.com/lausd-independent-charters-outperform-traditional-schools-on-state-tests/ Tue, 30 Aug 2016 21:45:35 +0000 http://laschoolreport.com/?p=41381

For the second year in a row, LA Unified’s independent charter schools outperformed the district’s traditional schools on California’s standardized math and English language arts (ELA) tests, according to data released Monday by the California Charter Schools Association. The district’s magnets topped both. 

The district’s independent charters saw 46 percent of its students meet or exceed the standard on the ELA test, versus 39 percent for the district’s traditional schools. On the math test, 30 percent of independent charters met or exceeded the standard, versus 28 percent for traditional schools.

LA Unified has more charter students than any other district in the country. Last school year, when the tests were administered, the district had 101,000 charter students in 221 schools, making up 16 percent of the district enrollment.

Independent charters saw growth on the tests over last year, which was the first year the Common-Core aligned California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) was given. Charters were not alone in seeing growth, as both the district and the state also saw improvement over last year. The district’s independent charters had a 7 percentage point improvement on the ELA test and a 4 percentage point improvement on the math test, while traditional schools saw a 6 percentage point improvement on the ELA test and a 3 percentage point improvement on math.

“We are encouraged that charter schools increased the percent of students meeting and exceeding standards in both ELA and math from 2015 to 2016,” according to a CCSA statement.

Charters also demonstrated a high level of performance over traditional schools in some key subgroups. In some instances, charter subgroups outperformed the district’s overall traditional school average. (See graphic. Click the math button to change the numbers from English language arts to math.)

Demographically, independent charter students and traditional students who were tested matched up closely. The tests are given to students in grades 3 through 8 and in 11th grade. Of the students tested, 82 percent of charter students qualified as low-income, compared to 80 percent for traditional schools, according to LA Unified. Charters also match up closely on ethnicity with traditional schools, in particular for Latinos, with 74 percent for charters and 73 percent for traditional schools. Independent charters had 11 percent disabled students, compared to 12 percent for the district, and 19 percent English learners at charters compared to 18 percent at traditional schools.

As it did last year, LA Unified released numbers that showed its magnet schools outperformed the district’s independent charters, although the demographics on the two do not match up closely. Magnets had a lower number of low-income students (69 percent), students with disabilities (6 percent) and English learners (5 percent).

“This is another accomplishment to celebrate as we move closer to our goal of preparing all of our graduates for success,” LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King said in a statement. “We are working hard to identify strategies that support student achievement. We want all of our schools – no matter what model – to continue to make progress in helping students fulfill their potential. But what is great about LA Unified is that we believe in all of our schools and all of our students.”

Statewide, the results were more mixed for independent charters, the CCSA data showed. Although the demographics match up relatively closely, charter students trailed the state in the percentage meeting or exceeding the standard on the math test, 35 percent to 37 percent, but outperformed on the ELA test, 50 percent to 49 percent.

CCSA also presented numbers comparing LA’s independent charters to traditional schools, but removed affiliated charters from the equation. There were 53 affiliated charters in operation last year. The schools are primarily located in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, and while they have many of the freedoms granted charters in how the schools are run, they adhere to all district collective bargaining agreements and also receive their budgets directly from the district.

When affiliated charters are removed, the scores for the district’s traditional schools drop.

(Credit: LAUSD)

By Barbara Jones

Los Angeles Unified’s popular magnet centers and schools outscored independent charters by double-digit margins on California’s new state assessments, and also beat statewide averages on the rigorous math and English tests, according to data released today.

In the analysis of the Smarter Balanced Assessments, 61 percent of magnet students met or exceeded standards in English-Language Arts (ELA), compared with 45 percent of independent charter students. On the math assessments, 48 percent of magnet students met or exceeded standards, while 31 percent of independent charter students hit those marks.

“This is another accomplishment to celebrate as we move closer to our goal of preparing all of our graduates for success,” said Superintendent Michelle King.

“We are working hard to identify strategies that support student achievement. We want all of our schools – no matter what model – to continue to make progress in helping students fulfill their potential,” she said. “But what is great about L.A. Unified is that we believe in all of our schools and all of our students.”

Statewide, an average of 37 percent of students met or exceeded standards on math assessments, as did 49 percent on ELA tests. In traditional District schools, 29 percent of students met or exceeded math standards and 39 percent performed at that level on the English exam.

Magnets made across-the-board gains over their scores for 2015, when they outperformed independent charters and traditional schools.

“Magnet schools are committed to creating and maintaining a culture of rigor, high expectations, and scholarship,” said Keith Abrahams, the executive director of Student Integration Services. “Our schools establish the necessary conditions for innovation, exploration, and academic success. We view the Smarter Balanced results as a testament to our hard work.”

L.A.Unified currently has 214 themed magnet centers or free-standing schools, with plans to add or expand at least 13 more in 2017.  The themes include business, communications, the increasingly popular STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – and programs for gifted students.

Click here to read the full story on LAUSD Daily. And click here to read LA School Report’s three-part series on magnets.

To add to his success at the school, Waynee has now been named National Magnet School Teacher of the Year by Magnet Schools of America.

“It’s amazing. I’ve been teaching a long time and it is an honor. I tell my students that I could not have won it without them because I get to brag about them and all the amazing projects they are doing,” Waynee said.

Waynee worked in Hollywood for a dozen years and earned a list of screenwriting and producing credits before coming to the school. He previously worked as a teacher for three years in Texas after graduating from Notre Dame and signing up with Teach For America. Upon moving to Hollywood he earned a master’s degree from USC while substitute teaching before taking the full-time job at LAUSD/USC Cinematic Arts and Engineering Magnet.

The magnet school is a small one for the district, with 660 students in grades 6-12, and Waynee said one advantage of the size is being able to more closely follow all of his students.

“Being a smaller magnet, we really are a family and you know early on how a student is doing, if they are failing a class or need extra help,” he said.

The funding for the school’s conversion to cinematic arts was part of a three-year, $10.4 million federal Magnet School Assistance Program grant shared with four other schools. The grant has allowed the school to purchase professional-grade film and audio equipment, along with computers and editing software, allowing Waynee’s students to learn college-level skills.

The grant runs out this year, so Waynee said fundraising will be needed to keep the school’s cinematic arts program operating. He already authored a grant that netted $30,000 for the school and will be working on more over the summer.

Waynee teaches his students a wide variety of multimedia skills in a number of courses, including film, video, editing, Photoshop and graphic design.

“He helps everyone and really helps us with our projects and gives us tips and advice. He makes us think and makes us work hard,” said Zion Flores, a junior. “I learned a lot in his classes and taught myself things I never thought I would be interested in like film and photography.”

One key technique Waynee said he uses to inspire his students is to attach real world experience to his assignments. He often has his students enter outside contests, and some of them have produced stories that have appeared on KCRW and in the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets.

“To me it’s really about finding your passion — and bring it to your students,” Waynee said when asked what he has learned the most about being an effective teacher. “A lot of my students are a little shy or technology-scared at first and they have never used a camera before, but I find they are willing to embrace it. What I try to do more than anything else is give them real world experience. A lot of my assignments are connected to competitions and things that we can do to get published.”

Jessica Munoz, a junior, had an audio story appear on KCRW that she produced in one of Waynee’s classes.

“Mr. Waynee really — as opposed to other teachers — he does short lectures and then lets you be as creative as you want with it. It is more of a suggestion and that you have the power and he lets you explore your creativity,” Munoz said.

Waynee said when students like Munoz get their projects out in the world it can inspire them much more than any lecture or homework assignment can.

“I feel that if they are challenged and see that, ‘Oh, what I am doing has a chance to be seen and get out there,’ they challenge themselves a little more and find what they feared before they maybe get over,” Waynee said.

Several of his students said one of Waynee’s best attributes is his availability, as he is often at his desk during lunch and after school for students who need extra help.

“He’s always here,” said junior Winfred Ruiz. “He’s the one who is always introducing me to new people and to new things. He is always teaching me things. I’ve had Photoshop for three years, and now I know all the tricks. It’s because of him.”

King/Drew Medical Magnet students Robin Sanford, left, and Jai’Myah Henderson work with a staff member at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Outpatient Center across the street from the high school.

Updated Feb. 10, 2021 | This is part of an LA School Report series taking an in-depth look at the different categories of schools that exist within the massive LA Unified school district.

Today we conclude a three-part mini-series on magnet schools. Check here for Part I and Part II. 

Jai’Myah Henderson may have fallen right through the cracks somewhere else.

The African-American junior at King/Drew Medical Magnet High of Science and Medicine was raised by a single mother in an apartment near the Jordan Downs Housing Projects in Watts. While the LA Unified School District struggles to educate many students like her from low-income families and challenging backgrounds, Henderson thrives at King/Drew and is president of her class of 2017.

Henderson’s success story is not even particularly special at King/Drew. Despite having a student body with a poverty level higher than the district average, King/Drew is one of LA Unified’s top high schools when it comes to graduation rates, standardized test scores or just about any other metric. Even Henderson seems to shrug off her background and her current academic success as if it’s run-of-the-mill.

Despite being class president, Henderson said she doesn’t have many friends. The reason?

“School work comes first. If they want to hang out, homework comes first. I know if I don’t do my work I’m going to mess up myself, and I don’t want to mess up myself,” she said plainly, as if that’s just the way things are supposed to be for every student.

Henderson’s succes and the success of thousands of other students at magnet schools is becoming more than a just a nice story in an often troubled district, because LA Unified now more than ever is trying to devise ways of expanding, promoting and replicating stories like Henderson’s.

Magnet schools have been at the forefront of a very public discussion this school year as the district seeks to to halt a decade-long trend of students leaving in droves for independent charters. Of the district’s 650,000 students, over 100,000 are now enrolled at independent charters, and per-pupil government funding is taken out of the district every time a student leaves for a charter school.

The enrollment drain was already an issue before a well-funded non-profit, Great Public Schools Now, announced plans to expand all kinds of quality schools in LA, including charters, which some board members and union leaders have said could bankrupt the district due to the enrollment loss.

Last Tuesday, the LA Unified school board passed a resolution seeking to improve outside partnerships and woo philanthropic dollars to help expand the district’s popular school choices, including magnets. The resolution was only the latest in a string of comments and actions from district leaders shining a light on the 210 magnet schools or centers.

At the same meeting the board also voted to expand magnet access for the 2017-18 school year to make room for 4,677 new magnet seats and 13 new programs, in addition to the 14 new programs opening this fall.

STATISTICAL SUCCESS

The reason for the increased focus is because magnets’ success and popularity are hard to argue with. About 67,000 of LA Unified’s roughly 650,000 students, or 10 percent, currently attend a magnet school or magnet center, and the district began the year with 23,000 on the magnet waiting list. Magnets did better than independent charters and district schools on last year’s Smarter Balanced standardized tests, which were administered statewide for the first time. However, about 16 percent of magnet students are enrolled in one of 40 “gifted” programs that require a certain level of academic achievement for acceptance, while charters and traditional district schools are required to accept all students regardless of their academic achievement.

King/Drew, which opened in 1982, is not a gifted magnet, so it is open to all students who apply. It currently has a student population of just over 1,500 students. According to district figures, 839 students applied to get into the school this year and 353 were put on the waiting list, according to district figures.

Seventy-two percent of King/Drew’s tested students met or exceeded the standards in English language arts and 31 percent met or exceeded the standards in math, compared to a district average of 33 percent in English and 25 percent in math. The numbers become more impressive considering 82 percent of King/Drew students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, a key poverty indicator. The district average is 77 percent.

King/Drew was one of the top high schools on the new California Office to Reform Education (CORE) school accountability index, which not only uses test scores but also considers graduation rates, absenteeism and the performance of high-needs students. On the CORE index, King/Drew scored a 96 out of 100, tied for fourth best of all LA Unified high schools. As of February, 88 percent of the school’s seniors were on track to complete their A through G courses, which are required for graduation, second best in the district.

Four of the top five high schools on the CORE index were magnets, and all four are schools that serve primarily high-needs students. Like Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet, which LA School Report also recently profiled, most King/Drew students are minorities, with a student body that is 45 percent African-American and 53 percent Latino.

AN OVERLOOKED STORY

Reginald Brookens is in his first year as principal of King/Drew. Despite the brighter light the district is shining on magnets, Brookens said he still feels they are overlooked.

“It’s only my first year here, but I don’t think we get the recognition. Because we are a wonderful place. Charters do a lot of promotion, but LAUSD doesn’t do a lot of promotion. LAUSD has an unfortunate dilemma of negative being on the radar,” he said. “So I don’t think we get the recognition we deserve and we have to do a better job of tooting our own horn. So I’m glad [the superintendents] are putting the spotlight on magnets because charters, they get the spotlight, they are on the news, they get the press. But as you see, we deserve just as much press and recognition.”

Among the keys to King/Drew’s success is a hyper focus on high academic standards. The school has about half the sports teams of neighboring high schools and no athletic fields, few electives and no musical instrument program — although more electives and a new music program are in the works for next year, according to Brookens. But what students get in place of those traditional offerings is a rigorous set of advanced placement courses, the opportunity to do hands-on occupational work at medical facilities and high bars that most students find the ability to clear.

One of the high bars is elevated graduation requirements that exceed the district’s. The A through G graduation standards — which require students to take a series of courses making them eligible for acceptance into California’s public universities — went into place districtwide for the first time this year, but King/Drew has had A-G requirements for over 10 years. The school also requires four years of science and three years of a foreign language, more than A-G calls for.

Of all the students, teachers and administrators LA School Report spoke to at King/Drew, perhaps none summed it up more succinctly than junior Robin Sanford when asked what makes the school’s low-income students perform so well and stay out of trouble.

“I feel that this school keeps your head on your shoulders. You don’t have a lot of time to be out on the streets because they pile the homework load on you, which makes you stay home,” she said. “Because if you want the good grades, you need to do the homework. I feel if I was at my [neighborhood] school I wouldn’t be taking school as serious. But I know at this school if I take it serious there is going to be a prize waiting for me at the end, and that’s college.”

POPULAR HOSPITAL OCCUPATIONAL PROGRAM

Tabitha Thigpen, the magnet coordinator at King/Drew, oversees the students who are placed in work-study programs at Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital, which is across the street, and other medial facilities in the city like West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. Two-thirds of the school’s juniors participate in the program. During an orientation meeting in the auditorium in March, Thigpen spoke to the school’s sophomore class about the opportunities they would have the next year in the hospital occupational program.

The high bar of expectations the school and Thigpen have for King/Drew’s students was apparent.

“In this audience, we know, not everyone will be in the program. So that’s the truth,” Thigpen said as her comments caused a murmur among the students.

She then explained that to be in the occupational program, students must have at least a 2.5 grade point average, but if they meet that criteria, “The only reason we would not want you in the program, can you guess? Behavior. You got it. We are here as your teachers and educators, we are paid to be here. When I send you to the hospital, they are not paid to be with you. They are adults, they have a full-time job. They did not sign up to be working with someone who is rude or insolent or disrespectful and cannot control themselves.”

Despite the mix of different races and students coming from economically challenged neighborhoods, students and administrators said there are few discipline problems at King/Drew, and the statistics back it up. Zero percent of students were suspended or expelled in 2015.

“I knew this school was going to be tough. I was looking for a challenge, something different,” said junior Carlos Leon, who said his home neighborhood school would have been Gardena High. “At Gardena in 2010 there was a shooting and I was discouraged to attend because I knew it would be quite dangerous. Here, I feel like students get along quite well despite our differences. We are closely knitted together, almost like a family.”

‘WE ARE ALL JUST FRIENDS’

Statistically there are zero percent Asians at King/Drew, but in reality there are several. One of them is junior Eun Jin Son, who goes by Shelly.

“When my friends hear about King/Drew, they of course talk about the location and the people who go here, and they are going to talk about the African-Americans and the Hispanics and the Latinos,” she said. “Statistically there is zero percent Asians, so I am the odd one. But despite all the prejudice and rumors and stereotypes that people have about certain races, everyone here is very nice and we are all just friends and we are all just close.”

Thigpen said the school makes sure to start guiding students in the right direction before their freshman year during a “summer bridge” program for eighth-graders. The intent is to prepare them for the stricter rules and higher academic standards. According to Thigpen, the average freshman class comes to King/Drew from over 70 feeder middle schools throughout Los Angeles.

“Sometimes they want to bring that (middle school or neighborhood) drama with them, and our dean of students is very busy with the summer bridge program to make sure we catch all of that early. Because if we don’t get them from the ground floor we cannot save them their senior year,” Thigpen said. “When you talk to ninth-graders, a lot of them say, ‘I don’t like this, and I don’t like that.’ And you talk to them in 11th and 12th grade, they are so glad they stayed. They’ve matured. They see we are on their side, and we want them to succeed.”

She added, “Sometimes they don’t realize what they are capable of because no one ever pushed them. Their low performance and their low behavior was accepted at other schools, but is not here.”

The occupational program Thigpen heads was frequently cited by students as a reason they chose to come to King/Drew. Students during their junior year — if they meet the criteria — get to do hands-on work one day a week alongside medical professionals.

“How many students applying to college do you think can say that they have done research, or observed surgery? Not many. So this puts you in a clear advantage,” Thigpen told the sophomores in the auditorium.

Two students who observe surgeries on a weekly basis are Stanton and Henderson. Each Wednesday they walk across the street to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Outpatient Center and spend several hours assisting doctors and nurses as they prep patients for surgery before sitting in the operating room and observing the procedures.

“The area I work in, most of the workers are predominantly black, so it’s kind of different because in videos and stuff you don’t see African-Americans in high positions, but there the doctors are African-American and it’s easier to talk to them,” Henderson said. “They are more open to try and teach me and they want me to learn to be like them.”

‘VERY PREPARED FOR COLLEGE’

Two of the nurses who supervise Henderson, Sheri Williams and Lori White, are African-American women who both had two children attend King/Drew. All are either in college or have graduated from college.

“I had a niece who went to King/Drew and my sister said she had a good experience. I was working here so it was very convenient. So that was my reason. It was a great experience,” said Williams. “I feel that my kids were very prepared for college.”

Henderson said she was not initially interested in the medical field and chose King/Drew because of its safe environment and academics, but the idea has grown on her. She now wants to become an anesthesiologist.

“I see surgeries all the time, and it was so amazing to me how they put people to sleep and then they come back. It was like magic to me. So I was like, I want to do that one day,” she said.

Thigpen said she believes the success of King/Drew and other magnets can be replicated and the district can compete with independent charters. Thigpen sees magnets, or the techniques that make them successful, as the answer.

“I’m very pleased to be at this school — and I’m just speaking for myself — because it is a full magnet, and all the programs are open to all the students. What I think is bad is programs that offer that for some but not others. I think if all schools ran themselves like a magnet they would be successful. We have always been a success piece to the district,” Thigpen said. “If this becomes the model, I hope the district can regain its student population. I don’t want to see us turn into a private system.”

King/Drew Medical Magnet

The LA Unified school board put its money where its mouth is at its May 10 meeting and approved a $3 million expansion of its growing magnet program. The move comes after months of public comments from district leaders pointing to the popular magnet program as a way to increase enrollment in the district.

Two magnet resolutions that were passed will create 13 new programs for the 2017-18 school year and specifically cited declining enrollment as a reason.

“I believe that magnets are what our parents want, and I think we should do everything possible to facilitate that. I think every school in our district should be a thematic school, and that we should do that,” board member Richard Vladovic said at the meeting.

• Read more about magnets in our three-part series, including profiles of Bravo and King/Drew medical magnets. 

The district currently has 210 magnet programs — with 14 more scheduled to be added for this coming school year, plus the 13 just approved for the following year — serving 67,000 of its 650,000 students. But more than 101,000 students attend independent charter schools, and a new plan from Great Public Schools Now would vastly expand that number as it seeks to increase high-quality schools of all kinds, leading district leaders to actively push magnets as a way to keep students from leaving for charters. When a student moves to an independent charter, per-pupil state and federal money moves with them.

A total of 23,000 students applied for a magnet this year at LA Unified but were put on a waiting list. The district has increased enrollment at magnets by more than 7,000 over the last two years. The expansion resolutions call for three new magnet schools, which are self-contained schools that serve only magnet students, and 10 new programs which are integrated into another traditional school’s curriculum.

All but one will be located at existing campuses and do not require any new construction, according to the resolution. One new school will serve students in 6th through 12th grades at South Region High School #8 in Maywood in a new facility already under construction and will be the district’s third center for enriched studies.

“The Southeast community has long advocated for more high-quality instructional programs in their neighborhoods,” said board member Ref Rodriguez in a statement. “I am thrilled that the LAUSD board and district has listened, and has taken another step forward in closing the opportunity gap by creating a Center for Enriched Studies to be located in the City of Maywood. This new magnet school highlights the board’s commitment to increasing the number of magnet programs throughout the district, and adds to the portfolio of magnet programs available to middle school and high school students in the Southeast Cities.”

At the same May 10 meeting, the board also approved a resolution that calls on the district to make a more aggressive effort to seek outside funding for popular school programs, including magnets.

On the new California Office to Reform Education (CORE) school accountability system that LA Unified developed with five other school districts, four of the top five high schools on the index were magnet schools. Former Superintendent Ramon Cortines celebrated that magnet students at the district scored better than independent charter students on the statewide Smarter Balanced tests.

“The performance of our magnets demonstrates how academic innovation can serve minority students and those from underserved communities who are seeking a nontraditional education,” Cortines wrote in a letter to the school board.

Cortines did not mention that 16 percent of magnet students are enrolled in gifted programs and thus need high grades for acceptance, but his remark was an example of how the district has been more aggressively promoting its magnets. Since taking office in January, Superintendent Michelle King has also publicly lauded magnets.

“If the word is not out, it needs to get out: Our magnet schools are tremendous,” King said at a January school board committee meeting.

Almost without comment Tuesday, the LA Unified school board voted unanimously to seek help from outside the district to replicate high-achieving schools.

The resolution was introduced by Monica Garcia and Ref Rodriguez and asks the district staff to “seek outside support for the funding” to replicate successful school programs in areas of high need in the district.

The resolution, Offering Families More—Promoting, Celebrating and Replicating Success Across LAUSD, asks the superintendent to report back to the board within 60 days on the progress of identifying the successful programs and potential funding sources.

“I am glad to see the board supporting our multiple levels of seeing what works,” Garcia told LA School Report. “I was pleased and encouraged by behavior that is focused on moving to high-quality education.”

The resolution points to specific kinds of schools, and their successes, that could head off the decline in enrollment — and losing students to charter schools — by beefing up magnet, pilot and dual language schools.

• Read more: Are magnets the answer to LAUSD’s enrollment problem?

The resolution was proposed by the two board members most vocally supportive of charter schools (Rodriguez co-founded one), and they can see collaboration with philanthropic groups that others view as threatening to the district.

Rodriguez said he envisions collaboration with all sorts of philanthropical organizations, including colleges and even NASA. “I believe there is a lot of philanthropy for this and there is still a way to engage philanthropy to this district rather than just give to charters,” Rodriguez said.

By identifying the best programs, he said, “We can work with foundations and support these programs.”

Great Public Schools Now, which receives funding from philanthropic groups Rodriguez cited, issued a statement about the passing of the resolution and said, “We are encouraged by the LAUSD resolution seeking to replicate high-performing district schools. One of the best ways to bring additional educational opportunities to Los Angeles students is to expand the schools — charter, district or magnet — that are already succeeding. We look forward to working in partnership with LAUSD on this effort.”

GPSN is an independent, non-profit organization working to accelerate the growth of high-quality public schools and significantly reduce the number of students attending chronically low-performing schools in Los Angeles.

Ref Rodriguez co-authored the resolution.

“We are trying to walk a tightrope and are concerned with the polarized conversation outside of the board or in the media,” Rodriguez said. The discussion didn’t happen, at least this time, at the school board level, since the resolution was passed under the consent calendar.

Garcia added, “If we don’t work with GPSN, then they will only support charters. We have different levels of philanthropic parent engagement and a lot of partners, we just want to see that accelerate. With groups like GPSN there’s an opportunity to help children and staff and leaders, and I’d like to have multiple ways of moving what works.”

The resolution pointed to successes in the district, such as Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School which ranked in the top 50 high schools in the state while 90 percent of its student population qualify for free and reduced-price meals; King Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science which saw 72 percent of its students meet or exceed standards in English Language Arts on last year’s Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, with 82 percent qualifying for free and reduced meals; and Downtown Business High School that has a graduation rate of 94 percent, with 84 percent qualifying for free and reduced meals.

The resolution is a way the board is showcasing high-performing schools, and Garcia noted in a news release, “The movement toward 100 percent graduation in Los Angeles is a model for the nation on collaboration and partnership with students, families, educators, employees, schools and community partners. As trustees for our children’s education, we are responsible for strengthening the bridges into our district and beyond our district for our college- and career-ready graduates and accelerating success for all. Today, we reaffirm our commitment to every child in Los Angeles in our search for partnership and investment for the schools our students deserve.”

For the past year, the board passed several resolutions all heading in the same direction, some creating long philosophical debates. The resolutions such as “Believing in Our Schools Again,” “Equity on A-G: Reaffirming Our Commitment to A-G Life Preparation for All,” “Zero Dropouts in LAUSD” and “Excellent Public Education for Every Student,” all passed after long discussions.

“Due to this district’s limited resources, we cannot do this work alone,” Rodriguez said in the district news release. “We call on our external partners, community organizations and businesses to invest in the replication of our successful district programs.”

He referred to school models that have found success in science, math, technology, arts and engineering academies and magnets.

Garcia added, “We can’t do this alone, we have to repurpose money and replicate best practices. This is going to lead to good conversations.”

Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet students Melanie Cruz, left, and Francis Covarrueias outside the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

This is part of a series looking at the different types of schools that make up the Los Angeles Unified School District. As part of our examination of magnets, LA School Report visited Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet to learn what makes it one of the top schools in the district. 

A nondescript building next to the sprawling campus of the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center hides one of LA Unified’s greatest accomplishments. The building could easily be passed over as a radiology center or an administrative center, as there are no athletic fields or obvious indicators other than a small sign out front to let passersby know it is in fact a high school.

And it is not just any high school. The Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet, home to more than 1,800 students, is considered one of the best in the district and the state. While many LA Unified schools struggle to meet the challenge of educating students from low-income households, Bravo year after year demonstrates that these students can be among the district’s top performers.

The school, which is adjacent to the USC medical complex, is on pace to have one of the top five graduation rates for the district this year, was a 2006 National Blue Ribbon winner and was ranked in 2015 by U.S. News & World Report as the 44th best high school in California and 239th best in the nation. It has achieved all this despite the fact that 90 percent of its students qualify for a free or reduced-price meal, a number higher than the district’s already-high average of 77 percent.

Students, teachers and administrators give many different answers for what makes Bravo successful: It’s the commitment of the counselors, the dedication of the teachers, the high standards set by administrators, the culture the students create. The multitude of answers makes sense, because asking why all schools can’t be like Bravo is like asking why all movies can’t be as good as “The Godfather.” If it was easy, everyone would do it.

“It’s just the culture here,” said Bravo Principal Maria Torres-Flores. “If I had to boil it down, I think that there’s three things. One is having a belief system that any student that walks through that door is a Bravo student and they can be successful. Secondly, having high expectations of all of our students, whether they are AP students or not. And the third encompasses all that, and that is the culture of the school. When the alums come back, those are the things they remember, the culture of the school.”

Jocelyn Kang, a senior at Bravo, credits the overall academic culture and how it permeates all aspects of the school.

“Bravo, it has a status, but I feel like it has a different level of academics,” Kang said. “You know how other schools have pep rallies for sports? But at Bravo, we have academic pep rallies celebrating different levels of academic awards for students.”

(More at LA School Report: Francisco Bravo valedictorian candidate drowns during beach cleanup in Santa Monica)

A REPUTATION FOR SUCCESS 

Bravo started as a magnet program within Lincoln High School in 1981. In 1990, the program became a full school and moved into its current building, which was built specifically for the school. Bravo was the first new school opened at LA Unified in 17 years and the first stand-alone magnet school.

Eighty-three percent of Bravo students were enrolled in AP courses in 2014-15, compared to just over 20 percent for the district as a whole. Eighty-six percent of Bravo’s juniors met or exceeded the standards on the 2015 Smarter Balanced English Language Arts test, compared to 33 percent for the district, 39 percent for its independent charters and 44 percent for the state. On the math test, 52 percent of Bravo students met or exceeded the standards, compared to 25 percent for the district, 28 percent for charters and 33 percent for the state.

One thing helping Bravo’s test scores is its low level of English learners, as LA Unified has struggled to meet the needs of these students. Two percent of Bravo’s students are English learners, while the district average is 33 percent. The district’s English learners scored worse than the state average for English learners on the Smarter Balanced tests, with only three percent exceeding or meeting English language standards and only five percent doing so in math.

Torres-Flores said the school used to have a waiting list topping 1,000 but it has been reduced to around 700 due to the school increasing its enrollment size. Originally built for 450 students, the school increased its enrollment capacity from 1,705 to over 1,800 around 2010, Torres-Flores said. And despite a big increase in the teacher-to-student ratio as a result of the steady growth, Bravo has been able to maintain its high level of academic success.

“We were built for 28-to-1 [student-to-teacher ratio]. Well, we have 30- to 35-to-1 now,” Torres-Flores said. “I always keep my fingers crossed when the fire marshal comes in that he doesn’t go into some of those classrooms where it’s like packed. You can only do so much.”

HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE 

One thing attracting students to Bravo is the hands-on experience they get at the medical facilities at the USC Medical Center and other nearby USC affiliated facilities like the USC Keck School of Medicine. USC has partnered with Bravo on a number of special programs that are funded through various grants and contributions from USC, government agencies and outside charitable organizations.

Francisco Bravo students perform at the annual multicultural fair on Feb. 25. (Credit: bravoweb.lausd.net)

Through programs like the Engineering for Health Academy, the Science Technology and Research (STAR) program and the Regional Occupation Program (ROP), juniors and seniors at Bravo have the opportunity to work directly with medical professionals in a wide variety of fields, such as biomedical research, physical therapy and radiology.

It was opportunities like these that attracted Melanie Cruz, a senior at Bravo from South LA who spends two full periods each day assisting in the USC Sleep Disorders Center.

“I came into this program because I was interested in the medical field, and those are hands-on activities you can do. I learn lots of new things,” Cruz said. “People think the sleep center is just, ‘Oh, we’re going to watch people go to sleep.’ But there’s a lot more to it and things people don’t know.”

Edwin Valladares, the sleep center’s senior technologist, said he makes sure the students aren’t just doing busy work and tries to gear their activities toward their interests.

“My approach is, what do they want to get out of it? I just don’t want them to paper push,” Valladares said. “I really like helping them connect the dots. If you have them perform a task, it’s just a task, but if you connect the dots and say, ‘This is a life skill, and here’s how you can present it on a resume, or here’s how it can help you with what you say you want to do,’ you’re really putting it in the big picture.”

Jim Bunch has been the Regional Occupation Program coordinator for Bravo the last five years and said the hands-on experience, although it is unpaid, can help beef up a student’s resume as well as help them grow academically.

“That’s part of what we do in the classroom, is we work on job applications and resumes to teach them how to put their learning here into their resume,” Bunch said. “When I have them do a resume with no instruction, it is their name, their high school, and ‘I babysat once.’ And then when they leave the class at the end of their senior year, they have a full resume and they are ready to apply for work.”

After five years at Bravo, Bunch is beginning to run into students who now have careers at USC after coming through the Regional Occupation Program.

“I’m just beginning to get the first crop. This one passed me in the hall here [at USC] and of course I didn’t recognize him, but I hadn’t changed as much as he had,” Bunch said. “He took the class in radiology, and at first he thought it had to do with radios. He didn’t even know what it was, and now he is on this path to become a radiologist. It is career exploration, the students didn’t even know these careers exist until they come through the program.”

One of those former students is Eric Montero, who graduated from Bravo in 2011 and grew up in a nearby neighborhood. Montero partcipated in the ROP program as a senior and now works as a pharmacy tech at the medical center while studying business at East Los Angeles Community College. He said he may want to open his own pharmacy someday.

“It’s a really good program. Not everyone likes the medical field, but for the people that would like to join it, the ROP program is a great opportunity to look more into it and see what it really is like to work in a hospital. I felt like that was something that pushed me more forward,” Montero said.

Kang, through the Science Technology and Research (STAR) program, assists in a research lab that works with rats to develop drugs that could suppress alcoholism in humans.

“Working in a lab, it’s more trial and error and you are not always going to get what you want. You are mostly going to fail in science, that’s what I have learned here,” Kang said.

Samantha Delossantos is a senior from Koreatown and works in the same lab as Kang. She is the kind of student that often falls through the cracks at other schools due to family problems and economic challenges.

“The lab work, I’m really interested in working with animals and drugs and alcohol because of my personal background. Both of my parents are alcoholics,” she said.

Delossantos said she rarely sees her father and lives with her mother and her grandmother. Her mother has been unemployed for several years, so they survive off her grandmother’s pension. She takes the subway and then a bus every day to get to Bravo. Despite these challenges, Delossantos said she is getting good grades and hopes to be accepted to USC where she wants to study to become a pharmacist. She hopes the work they do in the lab could one day help her mother, or others like her.

“She wants to stop drinking, but I understand it’s really hard to stop when you are already addicted to it,” Delossantos said. “It’s not like she doesn’t want to have a job, it’s just that she lost motivation, I think, because of alcoholism. I want to try and help her. Not just her, but everyone else.

“When I was younger she always told me to be a doctor. I commute on the train every day, and I see all different kinds of people, and some of them are alcoholics, and they are just not in control of themselves anymore. So that’s what inspires me to become a better person and actually help them. You can’t help everyone, but small changes can make a big difference. I like the idea that alcoholism can be prevented through the drugs we are studying here.”

DIVERSITY AND ACCEPTANCE 

Seventy-nine percent of Bravo’s students are Latino, 10 percent are Asian, 6 percent are white and 2 percent are African-American. While those demographics do not make it an extraordinarily diverse school for LA Unified — where roughly 74 percent of all students are Latino, 9.8 percent are white, 8.4 percent are African-American and 6 percent are Asian — its diversity comes from the many different sections of Los Angeles where its students live.

Bravo attracts students from all around the district, including some from as far as San Pedro and the San Fernando Valley. Magnets offer free busing to most high school students who live farther than five miles away. Roughly 85 percent of Bravo’s students arrive by bus. And while a traditional high school typically has students that attended a handful of feeder middle schools, Bravo’s students come to the school from more than 32 different middle schools from around East LA, South LA and other places like Hollywood and Koreatown.

Harsheta Patel works in a cancer research lab and said she was attracted to Bravo because she wants to work in the medical field. She said when family and friends find out what she does every day, “They are just in shock. They say, ‘This is something people with PhD’s do, this is not something that high school students should do.’ But high school students can do it if they put their mind to it.”

Patel, from South Los Angeles,  is one of the few Indian students at Bravo but said she does not feel like an outsider.

“Everybody just gets along. It is very diverse,” she said. “There are lots of clubs and activities, and people are from all different ethnicities and cultures, and everybody just seems to have fun. It’s a really nice experience.”

Mirna El-Khalily is from Koreatown and works with Patel in the lab. She is of Egyptian descent and there are few other Egyptians at Bravo, but she also lauded the accepting environment.

“Bravo is really special because it is so diverse. You have people from all over Los Angeles coming to Bravo,” she said. “The majority of Bravo is minority students, so there’s just a whole bunch of different cultures, and that is something Bravo takes pride in. Last week we had a multicultural fair. I think at Bravo you get the knowledge base, but you also have that accepting environment.”

Torres-Flores agreed that Bravo’s accepting environment is key to helping the students succeed.

“I think that’s the most important piece of Bravo, in that kids come from all over the place, and they get to know each other, and how much more they are alike than different,” she said. “They learn to respect each other. You see kids coming together to study or eat together and they are all mixed up. They don’t live near each other, but here they are best buds. That’s the biggest difference I think for magnet kids in that they really get — it’s like a United Nations — they get to learn about each other.”

LA Unified has so many different kinds of schools, it’s hard to keep them all straight. With such varied terms as affiliated charter, independent charter, magnet school, pilot school, continuation school, option school and others, it can be a challenge to understand what they are, what they offer and how they differ. 

This is the first part of an LA School Report series taking an in-depth look at the different categories of schools that exist within the massive LA Unified school district.

Today we examine magnets schools. 

(Read more about magnets and their expansion in our series, including profiles of Bravo and King/Drew medical magnets.)

(Read our series on affiliated charter schools.)

LA Unified’s former and current superintendents and several school board members have all recently made laudatory statements about the district’s magnet schools, touting their performance and highlighting their importance to the future of the district.

“If the word is not out, it needs to get out: Our magnet schools are tremendous,” Superintendent Michelle King said at a January school board committee meeting.

Why the urgency with the pro-magnet talk? What exactly are magnets anyway, and what makes them so great in the eyes of LA Unified’s leaders?

To help answer these questions, LA School Report visited two of the district’s top magnet schools and interviewed students, staff and Keith Abrahams, executive director of LA Unified’s Student Integration Services. (Look for coming profiles of Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet and King Drew Medical Magnet High of Medicine and Science.)

Perhaps the biggest reason for the increase in magnet chatter is the decade-long enrollment decline. District leaders see magnets as the best way to reverse it.

Numerous LA Unified officials started publicly touting magnets following the revelation in August of a plan by the Broad Foundation to expand charter schools in the district to include half of all its students within eight years. The news sent shockwaves through the district because of the significant financial threat to the district. Every time a student leaves a traditional district school for an independent charter, state and federal dollars leave too. LA Unified is facing giant budget deficits in the coming years because of the enrollment drain and other factors, including pension liabilities and recent increases in the size of the district staff.

The school board and the LA teachers union, UTLA, denounced the Broad plan as an attempt to bankrupt the district and wipe out the union. Then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines called it an “ill-advised” plan that could hurt not only education but the entire city.

Weeks after the Broad plan was revealed, Cortines released a report touting the performance of the district’s magnet schools compared to its independent charter schools on the statewide Smarter Balanced standardized tests. The magnet schools did better than the charters and the state average, Cortines pointed out.

“The performance of our magnets demonstrates how academic innovation can serve minority students and those from underserved communities who are seeking a nontraditional education,” Cortines wrote in a letter to the LA Unified school board.

Cortines’ pro-magnet statement was a direct response to the California Charter Schools Association, which had been calling attention to the fact that LA Unified’s charter schools had outperformed the traditional schools on the tests.

Cortines retired and was replaced in January by King, who continued calling attention to LA Unified’s magnets.

“The highest performing of the schools are our magnet schools, and they are outperforming charters. If we want to incubate what is working, we need to look at magnet schools,” she said at the January meeting of the board’s Committee of the Whole. The discussion had centered around the fact that magnets are not attracting as many federal dollars as charters.

At the same meeting, board member Monica Ratliff said, “We have some amazing magnet schools, maybe we need to do a better job at publicizing what a great job they are doing and replicate more of them.”

MAGNETS BY THE NUMBERS

About 67,000 of LA Unified’s roughly 650,000 students currently attend the district’s 210 magnet schools or centers, which are specialized schools with a particular academic focus, ranging from the arts to math to science.

In comparison, more than 101,000 students are enrolled at 221 independent charters, which are privately operated but publicly funded schools.

Fifty-five percent of LA Unified’s magnet students met or exceeded the standards in the 2015 Smarter Balanced English Language Arts test, compared to only 33 percent for the district, 39 percent for charters and 44 percent for the state. Forty-four percent of magnet students met or exceeded the math standards, compared to 25 percent for the district, 28 percent for charters and 33 percent for the state.

There are some demographic differences that don’t make for an apples-to-apples comparison with charters. Fifty-one percent of the students at magnets qualify for free and reduced-price meals, compared with 83 percent at independent charters and 77 percent for the district overall. Magnets also have a higher percentage of white and Asian students than independent charters and the district overall. Statewide, as well as within the district, Asian and white students and students that are not from economically disadvantaged households scored significantly higher on the tests.

But there are plenty of magnets with higher levels of poverty than the district and state average that also have high-performing students. Two that LA School Report will be profiling, Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet and King Drew Medical Magnet High of Medicine and Science, have high levels of poverty — 82 percent and 89 percent, respectively — yet have distinguished themselves among the very top schools the district has to offer.

A recent district report showed that of the top five schools in projected “A though G” completion this year — a key series of courses required for graduation — all were magnets, including Bravo and King Drew.

Of course, “Not all magnet schools are successful,” Abrahams said, and converting a school into a magnet is far from a silver bullet solution. At Crenshaw High School, the district converted the perennially low-performing school into a STEM magnet in 2013 while reconstituting it and firing its entire staff. The school still struggles three years later, with test scores and projected graduation rates below the district averages.

WHAT IS AN LAUSD MAGNET SCHOOL?

Some magnets are full schools with their own campus, and some are a school-within-a-school. The magnets are open to all students living within the district, and it is typical that at least 50 percent of the student body of a magnet comes from outside the neighborhood — hence “magnet,” as it pulls students in from further away.

Acceptance at a magnet is based on a point system that includes consideration of race, as the magnets were originally created in the late 1970s and early ’80s to help integration efforts. There are other factors also, such as if the student’s home school is overcrowded.

In 1970, Judge Alfred Gitelson of Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that LA Unified operated segregated schools and ordered the district to integrate them. The ruling was upheld by the California Supreme Court in 1976, and in 1981 the district implemented a master plan to desegregate its schools, with magnets being a key component of the plan. LA Unified had already begun opening a few magnets as early as 1978. The concept of magnets first sprang up around the country in the 1960s as a way to promote desegregation, according to the Magnet Schools of America.

Cadets at Reseda High’s Police Academy Magnet. (Credit: LAUSD)

The person most credited with creating LA Unified’s magnets is the late Theodore Alexander, Abrahams said. Alexander, who died in 2004, worked for decades as a district administrator, co-authored the integration master plan and was the first head of the magnet program. The district even has a school named after him, the Dr. Theodore T. Alexander Science Center School.

“Ted Alexander was one of the unsung giants of this community,” Mark Rosenbaum, director of Public Counsel Opportunity Under Law, told the Los Angeles Times in 2004 after Alexander’s death. “He had an abiding faith in the ability of every child to succeed and a fierce determination to provide equal opportunity education for children of all races.”

Magnet schools are open to any student that lives within the district, and the district generally offers free busing to elementary students who live more than two miles from their magnet school and to high school students who live more than five miles from their school. Busing is not always guaranteed, but the district works to accommodate as many students as possible within its budget, Abrahams said.

In 1981, the district had a much different racial profile than it does today. Only 45.3 percent of the students were Latino, while today Latinos make up 74 percent. There have been significant shifts in other races as well, with the African American population falling from 23.3 percent in 1981 to 8.4 percent today, whites from 23.7 percent to 9.8 percent, and Asians from 7.3 percent to 6 percent.

Racial quotas are written into the guidelines for the enrollment policies of magnets, and most magnets are required to give 30 percent of their seats to white students (40 percent for some) and the rest to students of other races. However, with the number of white students having plummeted over the decades, many magnets often do not come anywhere close to achieving this balance due to not enough white students applying for the schools. For example, at King Drew, there were only nine white students out of 1,564 during the 2014-15 school year.

Despite the radical demographic shifts since 1981, the California Supreme Court ruling that helped create magnets has been upheld in court several times, and the district still operates under the ruling.

MAGNET GROWTH

Magnets have grown steadily over the years. In 1981, the district had about 70 of them, while today there are 210 programs. Some magnet programs have four-digit waiting lists, Abrahams said, and over the past two years enrollment at magnet schools has grown by 7,000.

In 2014-15, the district had 34 full magnet schools and 41 magnet centers for gifted and talented students (GATE), which require certain academic criteria for entry. The district will be adding 14 new magnet programs for the 2016-17 school year, and there are plans for more new magnet programs beyond 2016-17, but they have yet to be voted on by the school board, Abrahams said.

There is now a magnet school for about every category of academic interest. Besides the medical magnets, there are ones dedicated to the arts, STEM, journalism, public service and business. There are also specialized magnets, like North Hollywood High’s Zoo Magnet, where students take classes at the Los Angeles Zoo, or the Reseda High Police Academy Magnet for students interested in a career in law enforcement. The district is even considering building a new magnet school in the San Fernando Valley for students with autism.

WHY MAGNETS SUCCEED

Why do magnet students do so well compared to their district peers? The reasons vary, Abrahams said.

“There are a lot of different levels to lead you to answering that question,” Abrahams said. “One can be the teachers, when they are hired, then they are committed to this kind of education. The students are interested in the particular theme, and when they are interested in that particular theme, then there is a good chance they are going to retain the information and grow academically. And then, the magnet office, we have high academic and emotional standards.”

Other districts and organizations around the country are taking notice of the success LA Unified’s magnets have achieved. For one, Daniel Jocz, a teacher at Downtown Magnets High School, is a finalist for the 2016 National Teacher of the Year award. Magnet Schools of America, an organization that advocates for over 4,000 magnets nationwide, has tapped LA Unified to host its 2017 national convention because it was impressed with the district’s magnets, Abrahams said. The organization also recently honored eight LAUSD magnets for their exceptional merit and innovation.

“Merit awards are given to our highest quality theme-based schools and programs. They are models of success and represent the best in public education,” Todd Mann, executive director of Magnet Schools of America, said in a statement. “It is a great way for our association to acknowledge the creativity, passion and dedication of so many people.”

Abrahams, who has been in his role for about a year and a half, said new efforts are underway to try and take what is working at the magnets and spread it around to the more traditional schools.

“On a macro level, we are just now starting that conversation,” Abrahams said. “We had a few years where there was no [standardized test] data, and now that we have proof, for lack of a better word, that magnets are successful, we can now assist other non-magnet schools. That’s kind of where we are right now, and that’s something I’ve wanted to do since I got into this position, because I saw great things happening at these schools. And now we are looking at how can we assist other non-magnet schools.”

As far as the suggestion by school board members, King and Cortines that magnets could help increase enrollment and draw students back into the district, Abrahams said that isn’t his concern.

“Whether LAUSD wants to use this as a strategy to increase enrollment, that’s them. What I am focused on is providing as many quality seats as possible for our students in Los Angeles,” Abrahams said.

*This story has been updated to reflect that the Dr. Theodore T. Alexander Science Center School is not a magnet school. 

Joel Packer who lobbies in Washington for LAUSD

For all the successful magnet schools in LA Unified and elsewhere, they are not attracting as much federal support as charter schools.

That was a stark message from the district’s federal lobbyist, who told a district board committee this week that Washington is increasing national support for charter schools by nearly 32 percent but by only 6 percent for magnet schools, a difference that surprised some of the school board members.

“We never imagined this would ever be this much of a discrepancy,” board president Steve Zimmer said at a meeting of the board’s Committee of the Whole.

The money for charters rose to $350 million from $270 million while the magnet school support increased to $96 million from $91 million, according to Joel Packer, of the Raben Group, which lobbies for the district in Washington.

“Charter schools have big bipartisan support in Congress,” Packer said. “They got a big increase. Magnet schools don’t have the same political clout.”

In response to Packer’s overall report outlining changes in federal education policy, committee chairman George McKenna pointed out, “Charters can lobby and have money to give to campaigns and give to board members. Magnets don’t have that ability; they are not separate legal entities.”

Zimmer wondered if the charter money could also go to affiliated charters, which are still associated with LAUSD employee standards and controls.

“No one can seem to answer that,” he said. “And the Republicans don’t even know what they are.”

Board member Mónica Ratliff said, “We have some amazing magnet schools, maybe we need to do a better job at publicizing what a great job they are doing and replicate more of them.”

Magnet schools are specialized schools within the traditional public school model, and LAUSD has 125 of them, including specialized schools that have a focus on things like police academies and computer science.

“I am very disappointed,” said board member Scott Schmerelson. “Charter schools have excellent propaganda. I have been enlightened, but I have also been bewildered. Who is talking up the LAUSD magnet schools and telling them how wonderful we are?”

Superintendent Michelle King said, “If the word is not out, it needs to get out, our magnet schools are tremendous.”

King added, “The highest performing of the schools are our magnet schools, and they are outperforming charters. If we want to incubate what is working, we need to look at magnet schools.”

Packer’s report also showed increases in Title I money, state grants, preschool grants, adult education, Head Start, child care and more, with the only cuts in school improvement grants. Packer noted that some funding restructuring can end up benefitting LA Unified in the future.

The board was also apprised of other federal changes, including the successor to No Child Left Behind, known as the Every Student Succeeds Act. It reduces the emphasis in a standardized test and more autonomy for states to assess their schools. States will have to identify the lowest performing five percent of schools. That also concerned superintendent King.

“That signals to me that it could be mostly LAUSD schools,” King said. She was told that the new state guidelines are being discussed now at the state level, and that LAUSD should be involved in how schools are assessed.

Overall, the budget news was better than in years past, said Zimmer, who went to Washington many times to lobby in person.

“If we keep telling the LA story on Capitol Hill, of the districts like ours and families like ours, they they will understand how important role of education truly is,” he said.

In a quiet effort that could help mitigate the proliferation of charter schools, the LA Unified board is scheduled to vote tomorrow on what would be first two gifted/highly gifted high school magnets in the San Fernando Valley. Taft High in Woodland Hills and Kennedy High in Granada Hills would join 14 other magnet programs approved to begin in traditional district schools this year.

They are also among 47 proposed magnets — about 20 percent of the district’s existing 198 — that are on track to open over the next two years. That would increase the number of magnet programs to 245. The current number of charter schools in LAUSD is 285.

But it’s not about outnumbering the charter schools, said Keith Abrahams, LAUSD’s executive director of Student Integration Services, who is in charge of the magnet programs. “We want to continue to expand choices, and parents want what’s best for their children,” he told LA School Report. “So it is an ongoing process to continually provide those choices in the areas closer to where they live.”

It’s also about keeping higher-performing students from leaving the district. In his report, Abrahams showed that over the past year, a large number of these students were withdrawing from local schools because they don’t have magnet high schools to attend.

“LAUSD lost 1,099 identified 8th graders who transitioned to a Northwest (district) high school this year. ” Abrahams said, “This may be due to the lack of a Gifted High School in the entire Valley (Northwest and Northeast).”

Abrahams helped identify the two Valley high schools as magnet possibilities. His report will be presented to the board tomorrow. The plan for the new magnets was sparked when the board passed a resolution in 2012 to start addressing declining enrollment. Abrahams said 23,000 students are now on magnet waiting lists and more than 20 percent of them — 5,213 — are currently enrolled in charter schools, private schools or other districts.

So, to get them back, the district is stepping up efforts to add more magnets. Last year, 25 traditional public schools asked to become magnet schools, and 14 were approved in May. The cost to create those magnets, including transportation costs for buses, new teachers and new materials (at $17 per student, per class) totaled $2.2 million.

For the two new magnet high schools on the agenda tomorrow, the cost is $823,000.

Ten other schools are awaiting approval to become magnet programs, and 21 others have expressed interest but have not yet submitted complete proposals.

“We are working closely with the other schools to go through this comprehensive process [to become a magnet school] because a lot of things have to be in place,” Abrahams said.

Of the schools that want to be magnets in the next two years, none of them is located in the central/downtown District 1 represented by school board member George McKenna. Abrahams said he is meeting with district officials from that area tomorrow morning to discuss more potential school magnet sites in that area.

Magnet programs do not give preference to people who live in the designated school boundaries but are opened to students who live within LAUSD borders. Access is generally determined by the Magnet Selection Priority Points System, with the number of students selected based on the number of available spaces at a particular school. Students are randomly accepted into Magnet programs based on a priority points system. Magnets offer theme-based instructional opportunities from grades K through 12.

By 2021-22, the two new schools predict an enrollment of 613 for Taft and 458 for Kennedy.

Abrahams pointed out that since 1986, 78 magnet schools and centers have been named as California Distinguished Schools. Additionally, 14 LAUSD magnet schools and centers have been awarded National Blue Ribbon School status.

In the recent Smater Balanced statewide tests, magnets outperformed the district’s independent charter schools in nearly every major category, although the demographics of magnets vs. independent charters do not match up evenly, and some magnet schools are for highly-gifted students, which requires them to meet certain academic criteria for enrollment.

* Corrects to say the two new schools in the Valley would be for gifted and highly gifted students.

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Ramon Cortines

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines is praising the high performance of the district’s magnet schools on on the recent Smarter Balanced standardized tests, which based on a district analysis shows 65 percent of them scoring higher than the state average in English language arts and 56 percent of them scoring higher than average in math.

LA Unified currently has 198 magnet schools, which are specialized schools with a particular academic focus, ranging from the arts to math to science. The magnets are open to all students living within the district, although some do fill up and have waiting lists. Enrollment is also based on a point system that includes consideration of race, as the magnets were originally created in the 1970s to help integration efforts. Forty of them are Gifted/High-Ability and Highly Gifted programs, which require students to meet some eligibility criteria. Independent charter schools are not allowed by law to require students to meet any academic criteria for enrollment.

Cortines’ statement touting the magnets vs. independent charters is perhaps meant to counter some of the breakdowns of test scores that were done by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which showed LA Unified’s independent charters beating LA Unified’s traditional schools by a few percentage points in the sores, and by significantly more when the district’s affiliated charters were removed from the equation. Affiliated charters have a higher percentage of white and non-economically challenged students, and when removed the demographics of LAUSD and independent charters match up closely.

The CCSA did not comment on the district analysis of charters vs. magnets.

Charter operators and the district have long been in a propaganda war over which provides a better education, but the stakes have been raised significantly higher over the last month in the wake of the news that a group of deep-pocketed charter advocates are drawing up a plan to add 260 new independent charters to the district. Battle lines are being drawn, with board President Steve Zimmer saying recently that the plan is really an effort to “bring down” the district.

Although magnets and charters do not match up demographically, the solid performance of the magnets is a feather in the cap of LA Unified, which overall scored poorly on the tests, with roughly two-thirds of students falling below basic standards in English and three-fourths falling below standards in math.

Cortines also pointed out some “pockets of excellence” in the district at some traditional schools that scored well even with high levels of economically challenged students.

But as advocates for many worthy causes are calling dibs on the additional money, one group likely to be shut out is gifted students.

In fact, district officials suggested more cuts may be on the horizon for the Gifted and Talented Enrichment (GATE) program, which serves 68,000 children identified as those possessing special facility in at least one of seven LA Unified categories: Intellectual Ability, Creative Ability, Leadership Ability, Performing Arts Ability, Visual Arts Ability, High Academic Achievement, Specific Academic Achievement.

That could lead to fewer students being identified for entry into the district’s programs designed for them, including highly gifted and high ability magnet schools, schools for advanced studies, more rigorous academic programs within other local schools and a program for fine arts

“At this point we don’t know how much money is going to be allocated to the department, and it looks like we will not have any funding to continue our second grade testing,” Wynne Wong-Cheng, a district GATE coordinator, told LA School Report.

Five years ago the district began administering aptitude exams to all second grade students to ensure that access to GATE was not tainted by racial or socio-economic biases either by teachers or administrators. It was a policy enacted after reports by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights found that Latino and African American students were significantly under represented among gifted students.

Although Latinos make up 74 percent of the LA Unified population, they only account for 63 percent of GATE students. Similarly, African Americans are 9 percent of the district, but only 6 percent are identified as gifted. Meanwhile, Asians, who make up only four percent of students, represent 10 percent of GATE enrollment, and white children, who account for 10 percent of the total student body, are 16 percent of the gifted program.

By law, GATE students “require services and activities not ordinarily provided by the schools,” and “a local school program must comply with more rigorous standards by providing ‘differentiation’ (rather than ‘one size fits all’ instruction) as an integral part of the regular school day.”

For LA Unified GATE students, at least those who don’t transfer to a magnet school, it means they should be getting some type of special attention with every lesson. Gifted elementary students are supposed to be taught in clusters of five to eight students with other like-minded children. Gifted high school students are supposed to be spending full days in the same cluster model, in groups of 15 to 25.

While the federal law governing gifted students — the 1988 Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act — remains in effect, the formula to pay for specialized instruction has changed.

Ten years ago, LA Unified’s GATE program was a designated categorical fund, which means specific allocations were earmarked to support it: Every student enrolled was entitled to an additional $100 per year. By 2009, that figure was slashed to $25. In 2010, it dropped to $15, then to $13 in 2011, and finally to zero in 2012.

GATE funding was officially eliminated as a categorical fund item this year, with Governor Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Under the new plan, only low-income, foster youth and English Language Learners carry additional dollars with them.

Any decisions regarding GATE funding are entirely under the purview of local school principals.

Megan Reilly, LA Unified’s Chief Financial Officer, told LA School Report last month that the district is not tracking how much individual schools are spending on their brightest students, or if they are allocating any additional money for supplemental instruction at all.

While every district school must comply with California Department of Education codes, “it’s up to each school to make its own decisions,” she said, adding “we have no way of knowing what they’re spending.” Nor does the district plan to conduct an audit at the end of the year, she said.

The GATE department’s current budget is about $2.5 million, which covers 18 employees, including 12 psychologists who manage and implement assessments for the district’s 540,000 students. It also pays for teacher professional development, intervention programs for 133 schools that are failing to meet student referral targets and a 16-week fine arts conservatory for students.

Teachers who volunteered to act as a school GATE coordinator used to receive a differential payment, but that was cut long ago. As a result many schools have been left with no one to oversee local programs.

Each of the gifted and high ability magnet schools and schools for advanced studies — 215 total — is funded through LCFF.

Yet despite the stinging cuts, overall GATE enrollment is up even as district enrollment has gone down, says Wong-Cheng.

“We are doing a much better job when it comes to referrals, identification and testing,” she said.

The question is what happens after that?

Carthay Center Elementary School

As they rallied for the ouster of their school principal this morning, parents at Carthay Center Elementary School were told their efforts had paid off: Crystal Campbell-Shirley was removed from her post.

Instructional Director Autri Streeck notified teachers at the school, then met parents at the rally to tell them what happened.

“Everyone’s celebrating that part,” Tyson Roberts, one of the parents, told LA School Report.

However, Roberts says that while this is good news for the school as it transitions into a magnet, he and a coalition of other concerned parents want the seven teachers Shirley dismissed last week to be returned to the school.

The parents were holding rallies to protest her actions, especially against four teachers whom the parents regarded as experienced, high performing instructors and had been collaborating with parents in the magnet conversion taking place next year.

Efforts to reach Shirley and Streeck were unsuccessful. An office aide at the school said Shirley was not at the school this morning and Streeck was not available.

Now’s a chance for LAUSD parents to act: the SAS program, which stands for “Schools for Advanced Studies,” is accepting applications until April 30.

SAS programs are, in essence, gifted programs that reside within a traditional school. Offered at dozens of schools district-wide (see list here), they are considered a well-kept secret, perhaps because performance numbers are not broken out from the host school so their track records are hard publicize.

“What some parents don’t know is that kids don’t have to test to get into these programs,” says Angel Zobel-Rodriguez, a mother of two, who started a website called,  Magnet Angel (and runs another called Ask a Yenta) to help parents navigate the complicated gifted-magnet application process.

Instead, students can be referred by schools if they meet the academic criterion (see description here). And unlike with the magnet process, students can apply to as many SAS schools as they want and don’t need “points” — an accrual system that is used for the gifted magnets.

According to the new LAUSD Gifted/Talented website, the programs are “an intensive academic articulated program in which both innovative and traditional courses are taught.” The SAS programs are open to students from neighboring areas (pending available space) who have been identified as high performers, and the SAS teachers are required to go through extra professional development training.

In general, you can expect “classes will be taught at a higher level,” says Zobel-Rodriguez. “Think of them as gifted magnets but without a bus.”

For more information:
LAUSD Gifted/Talented website
Ask A Yenta
Magnet Angel
Great Schools

Tom Torlakson at LACES

State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson was in town today visiting the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES) as part of his week-long “AP Excellence Tour.”

Torlakson said the visits to high schools with innovative Advanced Placement courses are a “celebration” of a 10-year report from The College Board, showing impressive growth in enrollment statewide, especially among low-income and minority students. Nearly 41 percent of the 2013 graduating class took an AP exam, compared with only a quarter of graduates a decade before.

At LACES the numbers are even more impressive.

The popular magnet school offers 27 AP courses. Two thirds of students — that’s 600 out of 900 — enrolled in 9th through 12th grade are taking at least one AP class. About 40 percent of students take AP Calculus, and all 10th graders are automatically enrolled in AP World History.

It’s no wonder that the school is one of the most sought after LA Unified schools for students and parents.

Ellana Selig, Magnet Coordinator for LACES, a 6-12 school, told LA School Report that the school has received almost 1,200 applications for the 2014-15 school year. Only 240 were accepted into the sixth grade. Students in other grades are only accepted as LACES students leave for other schools. Selig says the school has a waiting list of 2,700 students still hoping to get in.

Acceptance letters went out on April 1st.

“You can imagine, my phone’s been ringing off the hook,” she said.

The application deadline to enroll in one of the district’s 191 theme-based magnet schools for the 2014-15 school year is fast approaching. Online information and applications are available at echoices.lausd.net, with paper applications available at local schools, city libraries and district headquarters. All applications are due Friday.

Magnet schools offer LAUSD students the opportunity for a specialized educational in areas such as business or the performing and visual arts. They were established in 1977 as part of a voluntary integration effort to diminish the harms of racial isolation, and they are once again in demand.

After four steady years of decline, the number of applications received by the District for the 2013-14 school year jumped to 63,916, up by more than 7,000 from the previous year, according to data provided by the district. Estelle Luckett, director of Student Integration Services, told LA School Report that the jump is largely a result of opening 12 new magnet schools and the implementation of the online application for the first time last year.

So far, the District has received more than 30,000 applications for the 2014-15 school year, 1,200 more than the District received by this time last year.

Previous Posts: Three-in-One Approach Gives Crenshaw a New Look for Success; Board Preview: Kayser’s New Magnet Proposal

The LAUSD Board, via LA Times

The agenda for today’s School Board meeting is packed with hot-topic resolutions, including a plan to streamline LAUSD’s teacher misconduct investigation process, a call to work with state legislators to pass a new teacher dismissal bill, and a plan to reduce student suspensions and discipline for “willful defiance” in LA schools.

These topics have received scads of media coverage and statehouse activity in recent months. LAUSD Board members have obviously been paying attention, and the media is getting behind their resolutions.

Board Member Tamar Galatzan penned an op-ed published Monday in the Huffington Post that explains the rationale behind her resolution to streamline investigations of teachers who have been accused of misconduct in the classroom.

And the LA Times published an editorial piece Tuesday morning urging the School Board to approve Board President Monica Garcia’s resolution that would update schools’ discipline policies across the district and cease the suspension of students for “willful defiance.”

Read on for more details on the resolutions up for vote at today’s School Board meeting.

As Galatzan writes in her op-ed, a key part of her plan is for teacher investigations to be run by a “team of professionally-trained investigators who are beholden only to the truth.”

LA School Report detailed last Tuesday how the resolution is an attempt to reduce the number of LAUSD teachers who wait with full pay in “teacher jails” while the district goes through a lengthy — and costly — investigation process.

Board Member Bennett Kayser, who frequently sides with the teachers union, has signed on as a cosponsor of the resolution, along with Board President Monica Garcia. It’s rare when these three Board members agree with each other, so enjoy it while you can.

Kayser and Galatzan have joined forces on another resolution voicing approval for AB 375, the new teacher dismissal bill that is working its way through the State Assembly thanks to unexpected backing from the California Teachers Association and Senator Alex Padilla.

As we reported, some education advocacy groups have expressed concerns that AB 375 won’t be effective enough when dealing with teachers accused of sexually or physically abusing their students.

But a recent LA Times editorial says it’s a good proposal, and Galatzan and Kayser want Superintendent John Deasy to work with the bill’s author, Joan Buchanan, to make it happen.

Moving from teacher-related issues to student discipline, Board President Monica Garcia has a resolution to update discipline codes in schools across LAUSD to mirror state-level efforts to reduce student suspensions and limit gaps in disciplinary proceedings among different groups of students.

Under Garcia’s resolution, schools must pursue all alternatives to suspension before suspending students; students cannot be suspended for acts of “willful defiance”; and schools must begin implementing discipline policies centered in “restorative justice” techniques that use counseling and peer mediation to resolve discipline issues. (Read more of our coverage on school discipline policies here.)

Kayser will be a busy Board member this meeting: His postponed resolution that would create new rules for magnet schools and their approval process is back up for a vote. (Read about the magnet resolution here.) Kayser’s attempt to bar School Board members who received financial support from charters from voting on charter-related motions will be back up for discussion as well.

Also up for vote on the agenda are several charter renewals and proposals for new charter and pilot schools.

Click here to see the full Board meeting agenda, and remember to follow us at @laschoolreport for live coverage of the meeting.

Previous posts: Teacher Misconduct Proposal Wins Unexpected Support; “Rubber Room” Teachers Rarely Return; Suspension Rates Vary Widely Among Schools; Kayser’s New Magnet Proposal

The Secret to Fixing School Discipline? Change the Behavior of Adults
A sea change is coursing slowly but resolutely through this nation’s K-12 education system. More than 23,000 schools out of 132,000 nationwide have or are discarding a highly punitive approach to school discipline in favor of supportive, compassionate, and solution-oriented methods. New American Media

Poll Finds the Less You Make, the More You Like Brown’s School Finance Reform
An even 50 percent of respondents told pollsters they favored – while 39 percent opposed – the idea of having “some money diverted from middle and upper class children to low income children and English language learners.” EdSource

Lockyer Widens Request for Legal Opinion on School Bond Campaigns
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer on Monday expanded his request for a legal opinion to determine if some local education officials and the financial underwriters they hire are violating state law by campaigning for school bond measures. LA Times

Long Beach Middle Schools to Start Day an Hour Later
The Long Beach school board voted Monday to push start times at the district’s five middle schools from 8 to 9 a.m. — a cost-cutting move officials believe will also boost student success. LA Times

Bill Clinton Endorses Wendy Greuel for Los Angeles Mayor
Former President Bill Clinton weighed in on the Los Angeles mayoral race Monday with an endorsement for City Controller Wendy Greuel. HuffPo

Orville Wright Middle School in Westchester Reinvents Itself in Bid to Improve Enrollment
Trying to reverse a plunge in enrollment and the effects of a high-profile principal kerfuffle, Orville Wright Middle School in Westchester – currently an aerospace magnet where students learn how to use flight simulators – is trying to recast itself as a magnet school with an expanded focus. Daily Breeze

St. Genevieve High’s ‘Cabaret’ Draws Ire of Conservative Catholics
St. Genevieve High in Panorama City, which won accolades as a National School of Character, now finds itself under fire, targeted by a cadre of conservative Catholics hoping to halt the production of its spring musical, “Cabaret.” LA Daily News

Partnership Blends Science and English Proficiency
Pupils at El Verano Elementary School are learning about science as they also improve their English-language skills. Their instruction is part of a federally funded collaborative project between the 4,600-student Sonoma district and the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco. EdWeek

Board Member Bennett Kayser

At the LAUSD Board meeting this Tuesday, March 19, Board Member Bennett Kayser is slated to introduce a resolution that would create new rules governing how new magnet schools are created — and who has the authority to approve them.

Under the Kayser proposal, a majority of the full-time, unionized teaching staff at a school has to approve of the magnet model before anyone can write a magnet plan.

The resolution comes on the heels of LAUSD’s January reconstitution of the low-performing Crenshaw High School into a collection of three magnets, which Board members (including Kayser) approved 6-0 despite union and community resistance.

Kayser’s chief of staff, Sarah Bradshaw, says that the proposal doesn’t have much to do with what happened at Crenshaw High. “Crenshaw already happened and this is going forward,” Bradshaw said.

Under current procedures like the ones used for Crenshaw, Superintendent John Deasy led the decision, which was approved by the Board with six votes (Richard Valdovic was absent) despite dramatic opposition from certain Crenshaw parents, students, and community members.

The teachers union was another vocal opponent of the switch to magnet schools. After the Board approved Crenshaw’s magnet transition, UTLA sent out a scathing press release that criticized the district for “using police intimidation against parents and illegal, racially-discriminatory anti-union practices against employees to push its destabilization and reconstitution plan.” (See release here.)

Kayser’s resolution, if it passes, would create a more complicated and nuanced approval process for magnets than the one currently in place. It could reduce the number of new magnet schools created because teachers sometimes have to reapply for their jobs when their school becomes a magnet. It’s likely that there are teachers who would be reluctant to approve that kind of change.

Additionally, the resolution proposes that before writing a magnet plan for a school, there must first be a community meeting and a parent survey to get input on whether the community wants a magnet school, and if so, what kind of magnet.

The magnet proposal, which must be written with input from parents and teachers, would then go to the Board for final approval. (See the full text of Kayser’s resolution in the meeting agenda here.)

Superintendent Deasy is also scheduled on the Board’s meeting agenda to give an update on the magnet schools program. LA School Report reached out to the district for more information about this, but we didn’t get any more details.

Previous posts: Crenshaw Reconstituted, Aspire Squeaks By; Crenshaw Protest Heads to Board Decision