Education And Employment In Los Angeles, CA
The biggest public school system in the state of California is the Los Angeles Unified School District. It is the second largest in the country, after the New York City system. In 2005, the District took care of over 710,000 students, and employed more than 74,000. After the LA country government, the District is the largest employer.
The whole city of Los Angeles and portions of several nearby cities are served by the District. It even has its own police department. Significantly, if the school system was a Fortune 500 company, it would rank at around 250. It runs almost as many buses as the LA Transportation Authority. Over 500,000 meals per day are served up in school cafeterias.
The system is known for overcrowded schools, poor maintenance and incompetent administration. The graduation rates are not very high either, leading to a large number of basically unemployable young people going out on the local job market. Additionally, the District has long been negatively known for its top-heavy bureaucracy. Various attempts to reform the system have been tried, but none very.
The divisive school dropout issue has been at the heart of District reform discussions for quite some time. An in depth study undertaken by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University postulated that only approximately 45 percent of Los Angeles students were graduating in four years.
A Washington, D.C. based public policy think tank estimated that one year's class of public school dropouts ultimately costs the state of California over 38 billion dollars in lost wages, taxes and productivity over the former student's lifetimes.
Matt Paolini is a education writer for CityBook.com, the family-safe online yellow pages, which carries an extensive directory regarding Los Angeles higher education.