About

In no other city is the momentum favoring bold education reform more prevalent than it is in Los Angeles. The city of Los Angeles has an extraordinary opportunity to reshape its public education system and effect change for millions of lives. While most acknowledge the poor state of the Los Angeles public education system, the discussions to date have focused on governance and power. Within the high stakes politics exists an education reform group operating at the juncture of the civic-school arena to focus the reform agenda on the needs of the underserved students in East Los Angeles. The Boyle Heights Learning Collaborative is at the forefront of the education reform debate providing a vision and a strategy for how the City of Los Angeles and LAUSD can make the aspiration of improving academic achievement in Boyle Heights public schools a reality.

The BHLC also provides direct services to students, parents and educators that act as an important scaffold for achieving better educational outcomes in the Boyle Heights community.

Mission

The mission of the BHLC is to raise academic achievement in Boyle Heights by means of:

• Strengthening parent capacity
• Developing student leadership
• Fostering a supportive civic environment

Vision

The BHLC contributes to the education reform landscape by creating alliances and shared agendas among schools, parents and community members. As an intermediary organization, the BHLC connects organizations with different constituencies, playing the role of convener in the community in order to facilitate dialogue and action around raising academic achievement in Boyle Heights.

The BHLC delivers multi dimensional programs that increase parents’ ability to advocate for their child’s education. The Society of Students program creates a culture of student achievement by directly impacting students’ personal and academic competency.

Core Values

BHLC practices are guided by the following core values:

• A belief that strong schools make for strong communities, school and community improvements are shared goals.
• Maintain an independent position outside of public schools.
• Remain embedded in the local setting, staying for the long haul, maintaining relationships over time.
• Use data to inform policy and practice priorities, being well situated to do the often sensitive and political work of disseminating public school performance data.
• Change education policy and practice through technical assistance and professional development.
• Add value to education improvement efforts by generating new knowledge about best practices.