Los Angeles: The Proving Ground of Education Reform | USC News21

Los Angeles: The Proving Ground of Education Reform | USC News21:

Los Angeles: The Proving Ground of Education Reform

By Catherine Cloutier

A College-Ready Academy #7 student hurried to class minutes after the afternoon bell.

Walter Rich’s history class atDavid Starr Jordan High School in South-Central Los Angeles spent the last 20 minutes of a spring school day watching Schindler's List. The classroom was dark, save for the flickering light of the projector and the bluish glow of a couple cell-phone screens in the back row.

In the highly acclaimed Steven Spielberg movie, Poland’s Jewish population packed their lives into small suitcases, loaded them onto horse-drawn carts and commenced their journey to Krakow and, ultimately, into oblivion.

In the classroom, students twirled fingers around their hair, whispered behind cupped hands or sat with eyes fixated on the black-and-white pictures before them.

“Where are they going?” one student asked, a tall African-American boy who watched