Analyzing Impactful Shifts in Los Angeles Unified
A review of policy shifts and past research on major change efforts in the district. To better understand the impact of LAUSD policy shifts over the last two decades, we pulled together past research highlighting the impact these shifts have had on students, educators, and families. As we approach the third anniversary of COVID-19 school closures, it is an opportune time to review efforts to improve Los Angeles schools over the last two decades.
Reviewed Board of Education resolutions from 2006-07 to 2021-22 and academic/policy studies about LAUSD since 2013. Included non-academic research from organizations studying LAUSD and adopted resolutions from the Resolution Insights report database.
The sections below pull out the major points from the full report — the data, the examples, and the context behind the findings.
As Los Angeles marked the third anniversary of COVID-19 school closures, GPSN saw an opportune moment to review efforts to improve the district’s schools over the last two decades. This companion to our Resolution Insights report pulls together past research on the impact that Los Angeles Unified policy shifts have had on students, educators, and families — drawing on adopted Board of Education resolutions from 2006-07 to 2021-22 and academic and policy studies of the district since 2013.
The goal is not nostalgia but momentum: to identify which reforms proved most impactful, so existing efforts can be expanded and new strategies sparked. The pandemic offers a rare inflection point for the district to reflect on what worked — and to advance policies that prepare it to weather future disruptions to student learning.
The district’s most consequential equity reform grew out of the state’s Local Control Funding Formula. Between 2014 and 2021, LAUSD refined the Student Equity Needs Index (SENI) — a school-site ranking mechanism built on LCFF — to target funds using multiple academic, disciplinary, and health indicators of school need. Research finds strong evidence that LCFF increases positively affected graduation rates and academic outcomes for low-income students of color, and that SENI does a good job of more equitably targeting funds toward the district’s most underinvested student groups, with a positive impact for English learners and students with disabilities from low-income families.
Governance changes reinforced these gains. The board’s support for decentralization created a network of high-quality alternative options, most notably the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, whose schools consistently outperform other similar schools across the state. And a deliberate focus on recruiting, retaining, and diversifying the educator workforce matters in a district where 89% of students are students of color — research suggests students of all races form stronger connections and learn better when they have teachers of color.
Mónica García was the third Latina to serve on the Board of Education in its 155-year history and served as board president for eight years (2007 to 2013), across most of the district’s significant reform years. During her tenure she helped the district navigate a $2 billion deficit and worked to pass measures that raised $3.7 billion for modernizing schools and directing funds to underinvested communities. She authored or co-authored nearly 400 of the more than 1,000 resolutions proposed by the board over the last two decades — many of them key elements of the reforms this report found had the greatest impact on student outcomes.