Basically unskilled

L.A. Daily News 3/14/07

If we needed more evidence of the failure of Los Angeles schools - and the need for an education revolution - the report that huge numbers of California State University, Northridge, freshmen lack basic math and English skills should do it.

In all of the CSU system, more than one-third of the undergraduates who entered last fall were found not proficient in math, while 45 percent of them lacked basic English skills. At CSUN a startling 57 percent required remedial math, and 40 percent needed remedial English.

Worse still, this was not an improvement from recent years. The need for remedial classes is growing faster than the student population at California State University campuses.

Considering that 41 percent of the first-time freshmen at CSUN this academic year came from Los Angeles Unified School District campuses - not even counting the undergrads who enter from local community colleges after attending LAUSD schools - it's easy to trace the failure backward.

The district might be dropping millions to construct more and better school buildings to learn in, but that isn't translating into better learning. How bad must it be when the schools are spending more money every year and churning out students with fewer skills?

What this illustrates is how the problems in the state's largest school district leave lasting effects. When LAUSD can't teach basic skills, that puts the burden on the state's public higher-education system to do it. And if the state has to pay for the basic-skills classes twice, that means it can't pay for something else. Like art classes or physics.

College ought to be a place for higher learning, not for filling in the gaps left by an inefficient grade school system. College students ought to spend their time preparing for one of the state's industries with worker shortages, such as health care - not learning long division.

Fixing the LAUSD isn't just about helping students; it's about preparing for California's future.