Learning from L.A.

The history of the Los Angeles Unified School District over the past five decades, reveals an organization pulled up from its early 20th Century Progressive Era roots. Decades of reform efforts have provided a lively audition for what a new institution of public education could look like. But public policy and the surrounding political system have created an atmosphere of continuing crisis rather than a new institutional stability.

In this seminar Charles Taylor Kerchner reviews the recent history of LAUSD, drawing from the recent book, Learning from L.A.: Institutional Change in Public Education. Kirchner shows how successive reform efforts have outlined the design of a more effective educational system, and identifies some policy levers that can help to create a new institutional structure for public education, in L.A. and for all of California and beyond.

Speakers include:

• Charles Taylor Kerchner, Senior Research Fellow and Professor Emeritus, Claremont Graduate University

Moderated by David N. Plank, Executive Director, PACE