Cortines marks first 100 days

ack in 2000, when Ramon Cortines was sitting in briefly as interim superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, he envisioned a plan to radically transform the nation's second-largest school district. George B. Sancez in the Daily News.

Its central office would be lean; decisions would be made on campus by teachers and principals; communities would play a key role in boosting neighborhood schools; the district would blossom.

Then, over the next eight years, the exact opposite occurred.

Teaching was increasingly directed by bureaucrats miles away from classrooms; central office staff ballooned as student enrollment dropped; and only one in four students who graduated were eligible to attend a University of California campus.