Even among the nation’s notoriously woeful urban public-school systems, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has long stood out for its pervasive academic failure and bureaucratic intransigence. Well-known across the nation as the backdrop for such blood-soaked Hollywood dramas as 187, the nation’s second-largest school district has one of the highest concentrations of dropout factories in America; a mere 57 percent of eighth-graders entering high school in 2004 graduated within five years, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education and the California Department of Education. Despite this record of failure, LAUSD has successfully resisted the reform efforts of parents, activists, and politicians.

But these days, the district is embracing the kind of school-choice and systemic-overhaul measures long touted by elements of the nation’s school-reform movement.

Last week, LAUSD finished soliciting bids to hand over control of twelve of its schools to private managers. Among the bidders is Green Dot Schools, one of the nation’s most successful charter-school operators and a longtime foe of the district; two years ago, it managed the spectacular feat of forcing the district to hand over control of one of its high schools. Another 186 of LAUSD’s schools will be placed into private hands within the next three years. 

LAUSD is also reversing its longstanding opposition to charter schools — the publicly funded but privately run entities that are part of Pres. Barack Obama’s own school-reform agenda. The district authorized 30 new charters last year and will approve the startup of 50 more by the 2011–2012 school year. This means some 200 charters will eventually operate in the district, making the City of Angels as much a bastion of school choice as Indianapolis, Milwaukee, or New Orleans. 

An even more important win for choice advocates came earlier this month, when LAUSD enacted rules allowing parents to remove principals and teaching staffs in the district’s worst-performing schools. The district can lose control of a school altogether if 51 percent of parents petition for charter conversion. None of America’s foremost charter-friendly school systems — New York City’s Department of Education, D.C. Public Schools, and Chicago Public Schools — currently give parents this power. A state law enacted last month as part of a series of reform measures will allow the district’s students to ditch LAUSD’s worst schools for better-performing ones in surrounding districts.

Certainly, these victories can be short-lived. The measures have already earned the wrath of — and threats of lawsuits from — United Teachers Los Angeles, an affiliate of the National Education Association renowned for its bellicose behavior. The teachers’ union’s supporters are adopting nastier tactics. At one school last week, flyers appeared claiming that Latino-immigrant parents would end up being deported if they supported charter conversion.

LAUSD itself has a history of heavy-handed disdain toward parents, politicians, and citizens alike. From tearing down such landmarks such as the Ambassador Hotel (a former Tinseltown hotspot and the scene of Robert Kennedy’s assassination) to epic bungles such as the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center (which took 20 years to build, cost taxpayers $1 billion, and has been partly torn down at least once amid concerns about toxic-waste exposure and earthquakes), the district has long paid no regard to public opposition.

LAUSD has been particularly unwilling to embrace any kind of innovation. It once employed famed math teacher Jaime Escalante, whose success in reversing the low achievement of poor, mostly-Latino students at gritty Garfield High School inspired the 1988 film Stand and Deliver. But by 1991, district bureaucrats forced Escalante to leave for greener pastures. The district also adroitly pits the interests of L.A. leaders against those in the 27 other cities in which it serves. Three years ago, L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (a former California state-assembly speaker) watched the state legislature water down his own proposed takeover of the school district amid opposition from district officials, teachers’-union bosses, and rival politicians. State courts put the kibosh on the plan altogether.