Los Angeles, CA - Education And Employment by Matthew Paolini

The largest public school system in the state of California is the Los Angeles Unified School District. It is the second largest in the country, behind the New York City system. In 2005, the District served over 710,000 students, and employed more than 74,000. Behind the LA country government, the school system is the largest employer.

The entire city of Los Angeles and parts of several nearby localities are served by the District. It even runs its own police department. Amazingly, if the school system was a Fortune 500 company, it would fall in at around 250. It operates almost as many buses as the LA Transportation Authority. Over 500,000 meals per day are proffered in school cafeterias.

The system has a reputation for overcrowded schools, lackluster maintenance and ineffective administration. The graduation rates are not very high either, leading to a large number of basically unemployable young people going out on the local job market. Additionally, the system has long been derisively known for its laden bureaucracy. Many attempts to reform the system have been tried, but none very.

The festering school dropout issue has been at the center of District reform discussions for quite some time. An in depth study performed by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University postulated that only approximately 45 percent of LA students were graduating in four years.

A Washington, D.C. based public policy think tank estimated that one year's class of high school dropouts ultimately costs the state of California over 38 billion dollars in lost wages, taxes and productivity over the former student's lifetimes.

Matt Paolini is a education writer for CityBook.com, the family-safe online yellow pages, which carries an extensive directory regarding Los Angeles other schools and instruction.

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