When I visited Los Angeles in 2010, a group of young teachers surrounded me at UCLA and implored me to intervene with the schools’ chancellor and get him to reverse his decision about the closing of Fremont High School. I tried but I was not successful. The teachers scattered, some stayed in teaching, some did not. They maintain a website to stay in touch. One of the teachers who was displaced, Barbara XXX, sent me this story. She is still seeking the meaning in life after losing the school and the friends she loved.
And just for good measure, Barbara wrote this response to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times complaining about how hard it is to fire teachers. Consider that the LA Times’ Christmas card to teachers. What poor timing.
Barbara also sent this laudatory article about a former colleague at Fremont who found a new job at Roosevelt High School, which she says was one of the “terrible” public schools featured (put down) in “Waiting for” you-know-who.
What is moving is that those who loved the old Fremont keep its memory alive.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane – I sat through some of the hearings for pink-slipped teachers in LAUSD for the last two years. After the first year, I somehow got acid reflux. I was so shocked at the horrendous treatment even “pink-slipped” teachers receive at the hands of the district’s lawyers. They are treated as if they are criminals and their private lives can be used against them. One friend, a teacher librarian, wrote a beautiful blog about teaching. The lawyers dredged up an old post about how she didn’t feel she had done much teaching that day to show that she obviously wasn’t a good teacher. Net result: this teacher quit LAUSD and went to a private school. Believe me, she was doing a fabulous job in an inner-city middle school that needs her so much more than her private school does. Shocking. I am retired now but still trying to fight the good fight as much as I can. I live for your blog each day. Thank you.
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HI Diane, I am still teaching so you may want to change the title!!
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I’m also working on a post titled What I Learned in School- its sort of a meditation about the difference between the education I received between 1968 and 1980 and what many current urban students receive. Not only did I learn how to drive- for free, I learned how to plan a wedding, plan a funeral and choose most of the books I read in my high school classes. I was standardized tested thee times between 1st and 12 grade- 4th grade, 8th grade and my 10th grade year of high school – all were brief – and highly forgettable experiences lasting no more than a morning. Compare that with the CST testing that lasts a week and all day every day.
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