Clarifying UCLA’s role in L.A. education program

Monday, May 6, 1996

Article fails to clearly state part campus will play in reform
projectBy Tobi Inlender

We at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
feel compelled to clarify and correct information in the Daily
Bruin’s lead story Thursday, May 1, about the Los Angeles Education
Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) program ("L.A. program aims
for instructional reform").

As the story stated, LEARN, which stands for Los Angeles
Education Alliance for Restructuring Now, is a community-based,
school reform program underway within the Los Angeles Unified
School District in which UCLA plays a leading role. It’s that role
and LEARN’s mission that we’d like to clarify.

LEARN’s mission is to transfer decision-making and budgeting
authority from a central administration to parents, teachers, staff
and principals at individual schools. Each LEARN school will be
accountable for using this autonomy to generate high levels of
student performance.

UCLA has assumed responsibility for the training component of
LEARN. When a school joins LEARN, its principal and lead teachers
participate in UCLA’s School Management Program, a course of
training offered jointly by the Graduate School of Education &
Information Studies (GSE&IS) and the Anderson School which
brings educators up to speed on new education, management and
technology skills. We fear this information was lost in the Daily
Bruin article.

The Bruin article also inaccurately linked LEARN to another
program just beginning at the GSE&IS called the Teacher Union
Reform Network, or TURN. Just last month, the GSE&IS received a
$250,000 grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia to
fund this two-year project that originated with a core group of
teacher union presidents. The project involves the leaders of 21
teachers’ unions from across the country who will work with
Professor Buzz Wilms and others at the GSE&IS to reform
teachers’ unions.

The restructuring will foster cooperative relationships with
school management, replacing the traditional labor-management
hostility. The goal is to create an environment in which teachers,
administrators and parents work in partnership toward school
reform.

As the Daily Bruin article stated, United Teachers Los Angeles
President Helen Bernstein is coming to UCLA to head up TURN and to
work on other projects related to helping teachers contribute to
school reform. She’ll begin sometime after her United Teachers Los
Angeles term expires at the end of June.

We hope these clarifications help the campus community better
understand what we consider to be extremely important work in
progress at the GSE&IS, and we welcome future Bruin articles on
our efforts.

Inlender is the assistant dean of external affairs for the
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

LEARN’s mission is to transfer decision-making and budgeting
authority from a central administration to parents, teachers, staff
and principals at individual schools.