As a philanthropist who has spent the last two decades helping turn around underserved schools in the LA Unified School District, I read about the California gubernatorial forum in December with a little hope and a lot of concern. My hope came from one clear point of agreement: Every candidate on stage at the California School Boards Association’s annual education conference acknowledged that the state’s public school system is failing far too many of its 5.8 million students, especially low-income students and students of color. That hope didn’t last long. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco offered his bold solution: universal school vouchers for all students. He compared choosing a school to choosing “the restaurant with the best food” for dinner. The idea is that public money would follow students to private schools, and that competition would pressure lower-performing schools to improve. I understand the appeal of the metaphor. But it bears little resemblance to the reality of how schools actually improve — or what it takes to turn around campuses that have struggled for generations. In practice, vouchers mainly drain much-needed funding from public schools. My husband and I cofounded the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools with then-LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa nearly 20 years ago to work within LA Unified School District (LAUSD) in some of the highest-need schools in the city. We now support 20 historically underperforming schools in Watts, Boyle Heights and South LA. The partnership is a collaboration with LAUSD — not a parallel system. We work…
