“I felt like I had a vision for what I wanted here at Mann and I felt like with UCLA’s help they would help us achieve that visionary state a lot faster,” he said. Soon after he took on the top job, the district chose Mann for UCLA’s next project, and Johnson said he jumped at the opportunity to partner with the university. “My professional goal is to try to figure out how to effectively educate students in lower socioeconomic areas,” he said. He grew up in South LA and returned to teach and lead in five schools in the area to give opportunities to students that he and his classmates didn’t have. Principal Orlando Johnson came to Mann three years ago with a passion and plan to succeed. Principal Orlando Johnson with students at Horace Mann UCLA Community School. Previous attempts to improve the school had failed. Its enrollment fell from 2,000 students two decades ago to 1,148 students in 2009 to 350 students this year. Mann was ripe for this kind of partnership. Rather than opening a new school from the ground up, this time UCLA leaders wanted to partner with an existing neighborhood school to help stop the pattern of enrollment decline. “I’m glad to be part of this unique and special, and dare I say, even divine plan.”Īfter its success at the RFK school, UCLA sought to expand its partnership with LA Unified. “It’s a revival,” said special education teacher Fredrick Clark. But at Mann, UCLA is taking on a school where only about a tenth of students are proficient in English and math. Kennedy learning complex in Koreatown that now serves nearly 1,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, exceeding district graduation rates and achievement averages. In 2009 it built a community school at the Robert F. This is the first time UCLA has stepped in to improve an existing school. By a margin of 87 percent, Mann teachers signed on, signaling a professional commitment to a dramatic change. With a mix of human capital reforms, such as rounding out the teaching force with UCLA graduate students who have expertise in key subjects, added student learning and enrichment programs in and out of classroom, and a new focus on developing a college-going culture of high expectations, UCLA is setting out to take what is, by most measures, a struggling school and drastically improve academic outcomes for all students.Īll of these academic and cultural changes will be supported by a governance structure rarely used in LA Unified that provides for greater flexibility and autonomy over scheduling, budgeting, professional development, assessment, and curriculum, and which teachers at Mann had to vote to approve. So far the district has put most of its eggs in its high-performing alternative school models, such as magnet and pilot schools.īut what parents ask for most is a high-quality school in their own neighborhood, which is also a rallying cry of teacher unions and public school defenders nationwide.Īnd with no overarching plan for that coming from the district, UCLA has stepped in with its own experiment: “a laboratory where we are learning and sharing solutions to 21st-century educational challenges,” UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies Dean Marcelo Suárez-Orozco said. LA Unified is urgently working to win back families, who continue to move out of Los Angeles to other districts with better schools or get on charter school lottery lists. After two years of planning, Mann has become UCLA’s second community school and will welcome its first high schoolers in August. Today only 350 students roam its hallways.įamilies have fled Horace Mann Middle School and its low student achievement, but LA’s largest public university thinks it can turn that around. (Courtesy: UCLA)Īn imposing South Los Angeles middle school in a dense neighborhood not far from where the LA Riots erupted 25 years ago once bustled with 2,000 students. Shante Stuart teaches math at Horace Mann and is a graduate student researcher at UCLA.
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