Report: Crisis in the School House
How lower- and middle-income families still can’t access the best Los Angeles elementary schools, despite plummeting enrollment and hundreds of half-empty school buildings.
Los Angeles public elementary schools are losing students, but the best ones still shut out middle- and low-income families.
Our new report, Crisis in the School House, reveals the scope of LA’s enrollment decline, mapping hundreds of elementary schools where student populations have dropped by 50% or more.
But behind the data, there is a disturbing truth: Top public schools, with reading proficiency rates of 70% or higher, have thousands of open seats yet deny access to those families that can’t afford to live in their pricey attendance zones. Schools like Ivanhoe and Mt. Washington Elementary, Carpenter Community Charter, Overland and Mar Vista continue to rely on boundary lines that mirror racist redlining maps from the 1930s to exclude students. And these schools decline to participate in the state-mandated Open Enrollment process that would open up those schools to more middle-income and lower-income families.
This is educational redlining and a betrayal of the Supreme Court’s promise in the historic Brown v. Board of Ed ruling that public schools must be “available to all on equal terms.” Without serious reforms, LA’s best elementary schools will remain out of reach for middle- and low-income families.
Read or download the full report below.
