The Advocacy Project, the Los Angeles-based civil rights and advocacy system, has come upwardly with what it calls a "student demand alphabetize" to identify the schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District with the greatest needs.

The arrangement, partnering with the Community Coalition and InnerCity Struggle, argues that most ofthe additional funds the district will receive from the land based on its enrollments of low income students, English language learners and foster children should be targeted toward 242 schools its index shows have the highest needs.  These schools are heavily concentrated in southern and eastern Los Angeles, besides equally in the the Pacoima surface area in the San Fernando Valley, as this map shows.

The publication of the index coincided with the release of the draft Local Control and Accountability Plan by Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy on Tuesday.(Go here for an EdSource report on the release of the draft plan.)

Because it is by far the state's largest commune, with nearly 1,000 schools, the commune is existence closely watched past policy makers and key education constituencies to run across how the state'due south new funding formula will exist implemented. The commune will receive a projected $837 million in additional grants based on the number of low-income students, English learners and foster children enrolled in the district.

"Nosotros sympathise and applaud the governor'southward framework (for school financing) to focus on the highest-needs students," said John Kim, the Advocacy Project'south managing co-director.  Merely he said there are "large swaths of disparities between the highest- and everyman-needs schools."  The index, he said, offers a way for the district to prioritize how and where information technology spends country teaching funds.

The  index is based on a dozen different factors. These include third and 8th grade test scores, loftier school dropout rates, access to child care, the presence of crime-prevention services, and a number of health factors, such as gun injuries in the neighborhoods where students alive, student fitness levels,  and asthma rates.

The coalition of organizations has also drawn up a what information technology calls an "disinterestedness framework" for implementation of the Local Control and Accountability Program. The detailed six-page document includes recommendations such as having student counselors specifically focused on English language learners, along with a wide range of other back up services for the hundreds of thousands of children who fall into this category.

Information technology also recommends a panoply of health services, including psychiatric social workers and counselors in schools with the highest number of foster youth, and edifice new health centers in loftier-needs schools that lack them.

Kim said that a pupil needs index would be helpful to all schoolhouse districts, but that each district would need to build its own based on its ain unique characteristics.

Kim wouldn't say exactly how much of the additional funds he felt should be targeted at the the schools with the highest need. "There will in the stop exist a remainder between district-wide programs and targeted needs," he said. "It just has to be the right balance."

DATA INCLUDED IN THE Pupil NEEDS INDEX

Category Indicator

Year

Geography Source
Academic Achievement Pct of eighth class students scored basic, below basic, or far below basic in CST ELA test.

2013

 School CDE
Bookish Achievement Percentage of 3rd grade students scored basic, beneath basic, or far below basic in CST ELA exam.

2013

 School CDE
Academic Achievement Number of high school dropouts

2011-2012

 School CDE
Early Childhood Education Number of children without licensed childcare seats per x,000 children (0-5)

2012

 ZIP code Community Care Licensing Division
Foster Care Number of children entering foster care per ten,000 youth

2012

 ZIP lawmaking Center for Social Services Enquiry
English language Learners Number of English Learner students

2012-2013

 School CDE
Students in Poverty Unduplicated number of students qualified for FRPM (foster care)

2012-2013

 Schoolhouse CDE
Enrollment Number of enrolled students

2012-2013

 School CDE
Exposure to violence Number of nonfatal gun injuries per x,000 persons

2012

 Goose egg code Role of Statewide Health Planning & Dev.
Resources for Youth Crime Prevention Number of nonprofit organizations related to youth law-breaking prevention per 10,000 youth

2010

 ZIP code IRS
Restorative Justice Number of suspensions and expulsions

2010-2011

 School CDE
Wellness Outcomes Asthma Hospitalization Rate per ten,000 children under 18

2010

 ZIP code Office of Statewide Health Planning & Dev.
Concrete Health and Activity Percentage of students who are in Health Fitness Zone in 2 or less categories

2012-2013

 School LAUSD

Source:  The Advancement Project

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