SACRAMENTO, CA - As an education analyst, I’ve often criticized the policies of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). From fiscal mismanagement to poor construction decisions to ideological adherence to failed programs, LAUSD has offered some inviting targets. However, legitimate critiques should be balanced with praise where it’s due, and the recent increase in LAUSD’s reading test scores warrants a pat on the back.

LAUSD students have been administered the Stanford-9 achievement test since 1997-98 in grades 1-11. Grade one students take the exam as part of the district’s testing program, while students in grades two to 11 are tested as part of the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program. It was on the first-grade scores that LAUSD showed eyebrow-raising improvement. Reading scores rose 14 percentile points, from the 42nd percentile in 2000 to the 56th percentile in 2001. The gains in spelling were even greater, with an increase of 18 percentile points, from the 38th percentile in 2000 to the 56th percentile in 2001.

When broken down by ethnicity, from 2000 to 2001, the reading scores of Hispanic first graders rose from the 35th percentile to the 50th percentile, while African-American first-grade scores increased from the 45th percentile to the 55th percentile. White and Asian first-grade scores also rose by significant amounts.

It is true, as PRI has pointed out, that problems with the Stanford-9 exam may cause scores to rise artificially. However, large increases such as those among LAUSD first graders indicate that something truly different is going on in district classrooms. Testifying earlier this month before the California Postsecondary Education Committee, on which I sit as a commissioner, LAUSD superintendent Roy Romer said that what’s different is a new intensive phonics program.

In 2000-01, LAUSD implemented the Open Court reading program. Open Court not only emphasizes the phonics method of reading instruction, it uses a direct instruction approach to teaching that includes the use of highly scripted lesson plans that basically tell teachers how and what to teach. Open Court was the program used by Nancy Ichinaga, famed principal of the high-poverty but high-performing Bennett-Kew elementary school in Inglewood, CA.

If Open Court has dramatically improved first-grade scores, Romer says that class-size reduction has not. Romer notes that LAUSD has been reducing class sizes in elementary grades for a number of years, with little effect. It was only when the district switched to Open Court that scores shot up. Yet, the state continues to spend billions on class-size reduction.

I asked Romer how teachers accepted the change and what was his view of the bias against direct instruction in the state schools of education. Romer replied that teachers protested the move to Open Court. After all,
most had undoubtedly been taught by their education professors that direct-instruction programs were mindless drill-and-kill exercises that destroyed teacher and student creativity. However, Romer said that after the high scores were reported, district teachers now seem converted by the results. As for those ed school profs, Romer diplomatically but pointedly intimated that entrenched ways of thinking need to change.

LAUSD’s success with Open Court underscores just how important effective teaching methods and curriculum are to student achievement. Unless a district gets those two things right, more spending, lower class sizes, and other conventional “reforms” won’t do anything to guarantee better performance in the classroom.

Lance Izumi is a Senior Fellow in California Studies at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for
Public Policy. He can be reached via email at lizumi@pacificresearch.org.