Looking At Locke

“Most students expected major changes at the school, but the changes were limited in scale and, on the whole, not great.”

– Taken Over: The Story of the Locke High School Takeover Through a Qualitative Study of Student Voice

Dan Chang boldly states on his campaign’s website that he “led the turnaround of LAUSD’s most troubled high school, Locke High School in Watts.” He makes this claim as the former Vice President of School Development at the Green Dot Public [SIC] Schools. In this position, he says that he “directed the growth of [the] charter school management [organization].” While this suggests he played a part in Green Dot's controversial takeover of Locke from the LAUSD, it does not explain what part he would have played in any claimed success after privatizing the school.

Chang’s claims are further called into question by the fact that in November 2009 he suddenly left the Green Dot organization. If Locke was, as Chang says, “LAUSD’s most troubled high school,” 14 months seems like a short amount of time to institute meaningful changes. Luckily for voters looking to evaluate Chang’s claims, the publicity surrounding the high-profile takeover means that there is an extensive record of the charter school’s performance.

Joshua Michael Beardall collected student testimonials for his dissertation “Taken Over: The Story of the Locke High School Takeover Through a Qualitative Study of Student Voice.” According to Beardall, the radical changes promised by Green Dot did not occur during Chang’s tenure with the charter school chain. “When comparing old Locke to new Locke, the students didn‘t perceive major changes between the two. Although they felt that the school was better, they didn‘t think that it was the major change that was promised to them.”

One student provided this disturbing critique:

I thought it would have been different; in 9th grade they present you with the allusion of a great, big dramatic new Locke with a big poster. In reality, it‘s just painted. It‘s still the same school. I was expecting a little more when they talked about the takeover. At first they said they were going to remodel and fix a few things, ―we‘ve taken into consideration what you‘ve said. You can use the lockers, we‘re going to do this.‖ But do we use the lockers? Do they even still work? Yeah, they painted, but do all the doors work? Do the fountains work? Many of the fountains don‘t even let out water. You know which ones work and which don‘t. They could have worked that out and cleaned things up more. They could have fixed the cleanliness of the school. If they said remodel, you‘d expect a whole lot more than that. They just put in plants and tables.

Another was even more direct:

“Green Dot could have done more, but they gave up.”

One of Chang’s initiatives for this school year was breaking Locke’s student body into four separate schools. The students Beardall studied for his dissertation “felt that they had been arbitrarily separated from one another.” Even though they were all on the same campus, the students identified themselves by the color of the shirts provided by the charter school. The Senior class was particularly affected, feeling “that the school was stifling them when they should be helping them to finish their senior year with fun activities and memories of their last year in high school.”

The sacrifice of these students may have been worth the cost if it resulted in Locke’s turnaround of the school. Unfortunately, the failure was almost complete. Another Small Learning Community (SLC) was added after Chang left. Then a reorganization eliminated a school that ensured students graduated with “a marketable skill/trade…if college was not their choice” in favor of one that met “the long-term plan to make all Green Dot schools college preparatory.” Others were forced to close after “Animo Locke II, Animo Locke III, and Animo Locke Tech all failed the 2012 WASC accreditation.”

Green Dot’s inability to retain teachers and administrators contributed to these failures, mainly due to “unsafe working conditions and limited future advancement.” One former teacher describes getting “struck by a student so hard that I left to be treated in an emergency room.” The punishment for this assault was a one-day suspension. Without help from Green Dot, the teacher “had to get a restraining order to keep the student from being re-assigned back to [his] classroom.”

Chang’s involvement in the Locke takeover fiasco should be enough for voters to question his ability to bring change to the LAUSD. His description of what happened as a successful turnaround should be a gigantic red flag. How can he be trusted to advocate for our kids if he does not even have the integrity to admit when he has failed?

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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, who serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.