The Geography of Los Angeles’ Public School System When discussing Los Angeles, most people think of its enormous wealth: Hollywood, movie stars, bikinis, Lamborghinis, and multi-million dollar homes. However, Los Angeles is a city of extremes, and the wealth is even more pronounced when compared to the city’s poverty. In all aspects of life, there is a disparity between the very rich and the very poor. This disparity is most apparent in our public schools. While some public schools in Los Angeles are exceptional and score highly on AP and SAT exams, others are far below California’s target API (Academic Performance Index) score. The quality of public education in certain areas of Los Angeles is, in part, due to specific geographic factors that create such extremes in LA’s public school system. While Los Angeles is a very unusual city, there are two easily identifiable Central Business Districts: Downtown and the Port of LA. Before the Industrial Revolution and fast land travel, the wealthiest and most important people in the city lived as close to the center as possible because it was the heart of business and commerce. After the Industrial Revolution, city centers became much less desirable to live in because of pollution and noise, and the most powerful people began to move towards the suburbs, away from the CBD’s. However, in Los Angeles these people did not move away in all directions; they moved west, towards the ocean and natural beauty. Conversely, the city’s poor moved into the recently vacated CBD’s, now the least desirable places in the city to live. The high level of immigration into Los Angeles in recent years only expanded those poor neighborhoods and exacerbated the wealth disparity problem. Now, poor neighborhoods with over 20% of the population in poverty have expanded out of Downtown to the east and south.

With such concentrated poverty, these areas of the city could never sustain quality public education by themselves - property and income taxes are not sufficient to ensure adequate funding levels for public schools. This was the concern when Los Angeles Unified School District was founded in 1961. Although LA Unified has a reputation for poor performing schools, there are some that break the stereotype and perform as well as or better than some private schools, including Harvard-Westlake.
However, the fact that the Los Angeles area consists of many independent cities, each with their own school district, means that some areas were excluded from the LA Unified school system. Poor areas segregated from LA Unified do not receive the financial benefits associated with being part of a large school district. This is the case with the Compton and Lynwood Unified School Districts. Both cities have a median household income of less than $50,000 per year, a median housing value of less than $270,000, and a poverty rate of over 25%. Even with Federal funding under Title I, it is very difficult for these districts to have effective public education. The six public high schools in these areas have an API ranging from 583-660, more than 100 points less than the target for California. Effective education depends on stability and security - England’s internal stability in the mid 1600’s lent itself perfectly to the beginning of the Enlightenment. If students are constantly worried about their personal safety or family at home, learning is not easy. In the cities of Compton and Lynwood, poverty has driven the crime rate up to over 370 crimes per square mile annually. This is an extremely high number, as the national median is 37.9. It is safe to say that this is not an ideal environment for learning, and the unfortunate location of these schools results in poorer quality education. This also means that kids born in impoverished families will find it very difficult to escape their current situation.
On the other hand, there are many affluent areas of Los Angeles that could contribute significantly to the funding of public education through income and property taxes outside of LA Unified. Isolating wealthy areas of Los Angeles in their own school districts gives schools in those areas significant advantages as there is more tax revenue available. Manhattan Beach Unified School District is the best unified school district in all of Los Angeles, with all of its schools receiving a 10/10 rating from both zillow.com and greatschools.org. Mira Costa High School has almost 2,500 students and yet maintains a 912 API and a 97% graduation rate. It is no coincidence that the best school district in Los Angeles is also one of the wealthiest. The median household income in Manhattan Beach is around $144,000, and the median property value is well over a million dollars. Because of its proximity to the ocean and beautiful sandy beaches, Manhattan Beach attracts a great deal of wealth, and because of this, its public schools excel. Some school districts are so wealthy that they do not need additional federal funding under Title I - property taxes in Beverly Hills are so high that Beverly Hills High School does not need funding for low income students, yet Beverly Hills remains its own school district. This raises the question: Why are Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, Compton, and Lynwood not part of LA Unified? Taxes from the high property values in Manhattan Beach and Beverly Hills could benefit schools in Compton and Lynwood, raising the standard of public schools as a whole, instead of creating enormous disparities between the good schools and the bad ones. However, it is not that simple. Because each of these regions are their own independent cities, it is difficult to create an organized school district that crosses city lines. This is ultimately due to Los Angeles’ unique geography and unusual formation. Because Los Angeles was born from different independent regions, it has multiple CBD’s and an extremely strange shape.

This unusual layout of the city of Los Angeles makes it very hard for a consistently effective public school system, and results in some excellent schools and some terrible ones. However, the best public schools in Los Angeles are most consistently small charter or magnet schools. Smaller schools are often better because they can more effectively manage themselves. Charter schools are often better because parents and faculty have an invested interest in the well being of the school and are more involved in its development. Magnet schools have the advantage of being able to select the most intelligent and hardworking students to attend the school from a large area. The best public magnet or charter schools are often in centrally located middle to low income areas of Los Angeles. These areas are ideal for these types of schools because they are normally not in close proximity to a good traditional public school, so the best students in the area attend them almost exclusively. Magnet schools benefit from being near the center of Los Angeles because they can accept applications from a greater area. The three best schools in Los Angeles Unified School District fit this description perfectly, and are the best partly because of their location. The Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, or LACES, is a 6-12 public magnet school near Culver City. It was rated number 19 in public high schools in California, and number 1 in Los Angeles by usnews.com. It has approximately 1,500 students and an API of 908. However, it is not located in a wealthy neighborhood. The median household income in the area is $75,800, and the median housing value is around $842,000. Because of the school’s centralized location, its student body is also incredibly diverse, split four ways almost evenly between Hispanic, white, black, and Asian. Additionally, the fact that it is a magnet school allows it to draw from a large pool of students from various areas and select only the best of the best.
Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan High School is the second best public high school in LA Unified. It is a public charter school located very close to Downtown, right next to where the 10 and 110 freeways meet. This is a good location for a school because it is in a very poor neighborhood with a median household income of just $31,000, and can therefore provide quality education for those who need it most, but is also away from the worst crime in the city. Additionally, it is a charter high school, so the parents and faculty can have an active role in the maintenance and development of the school. While the small enrollment of 444 makes for very high academic standards, it would be benefit more kids if it expanded the student body. As a charter school, it would be easier to maintain those high academic standards while bringing quality education to more kids. The third best school in Los Angeles is a tiny 9-12 institution located in San Pedro called Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy. It is in close proximity to another Central Business District: the Port of Los Angeles. Many neighborhoods in the area are just as poor as those in Compton and Lynwood. Zip codes 90731 and 90744 have median household incomes of $50,000 or less, and the three high schools in the area, San Pedro, Carson and Banning, have sub-720 API’s. However, Harbor Teacher Prep is the exception, with an API of 921 and a rating of 9/10 from greatschools.org. Unlike the other two, Harbor Teacher Prep is neither a magnet school nor a charter school - its excellence lies in the fact that it is so small. The entire school only has an enrollment of 404 students, which means that they are the best students in the area. The school is also safer and more secure because it lies on the campus of Los Angeles Harbor College, meaning that it has the benefits and facilities of a college with the size of a small high school. Los Angeles is an extremely atypical city in many ways, but its unique geography and city layout make it incredibly difficult to institute an effective and consistent system of public education. Because of their location, many districts that would benefit from being part of a larger school district are left impoverished and isolated, and many districts that could benefit LA unified as a whole instead make their own schools excellent. The result is a large disparity between the best schools in the city and the worst. Those few schools that are exceptional within LA unified are that way because of their location and a few advantageous characteristics. The quality of Los Angeles’ public school system is dictated largely by the geography of the city and the location of its schools.
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