The Los Angeles Times endorses Tony Thurmond for State Superintendent. His opponent, Marshall Tuck, is closely aligned with the powerful charter lobby. But that’s not why the newspaper endorsed Thurmond. The editorial board was impressed by his proposals to help the neediest kids.
The Network for Public Education also endorsed Thurmond, so we are delighted to know that the Times evaluated both men and preferred Thurmond based on his ideas and his record.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Has the joint endorsement ever before happened?!
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LA Times endorsement article
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No small achievement, let’s hope the new person makes a difference.
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What? That is truly amazing news. I am flabbergasted. The LA Times endorsed a public school advocate! That gives me hope. Makes my day. Makes! My! Day!
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The Times’ new owner just took over the paper very recently. I hope this is a sign of change for the better.
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As a matter of fact, now that I’ve read the editorial, I can see the charter/testing loving editorial board bristling under pressure to be fair as they wrote.
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And finally, the editorial makes one thing very clear. Billionaires cannot be allowed to buy the California Governor’s Mansion. Defeating Villaraigosa is even more important than defeating Tuck.
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The LA Times was recently purchased by Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. Is it possible that Eli Broad lost his influence with the LA Times when that happened?
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Logical conclusion. Lord, I hope so.
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Maybe the new owner never heard of charter schools.
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Maybe billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong became a billionaire because he believed in looking at evidence and facts and not listening to what overpaid PR shills told him and confusing their promotional press releases with the truth. Maybe billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong did what reporters should have been doing for the last decade and asked some logical follow-up question and realized what hacks these charter promoters were.
At least, one can hope.
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Yes, at least it offers us a chance to hope.
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A lot of assumptions here that are incorrect. The new owner has not taken charge yet because the purchase has not gone through, and he was not involved in the decisions. It’s the exact same editorial board going through the same process that it always did in a search for the best candidates. And Eli Broad never had an influence on the board’s deliberations and decisions. It meets with each candidate, it researches each candidate’s background, it meets to discuss who the best candidate is. I can see how it must be tempting to imagine some sort of agenda, but it truly is that pure a process.
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Karin,
Many of us on the outside are uninformed about how an editorial board goes through its decision making process (I include myself). And of course many are fearful that Eli Broad has huge influence due to the public agreement to have him subsidize education coverage. I am happy to know that the LA Times editorial board found Tony Thurmond to be better qualified on the merits.
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Broad’s funding of some Times education coverage never included the editorial board, and never included his having any influence over Times stories in news, features or opinion. Again, I can see where from the outside, if someone told me that, I might say, “Sure, he doesn’t” with an arched eyebrow. But it’s nonetheless true. In any case, that funding is long over. It is true that we could do a better job in the opinion section of making our own process more transparent to readers. I’ve been an editorial writer for the Times for 16 years, and never have I been pressured to come to a conclusion based on what some outside person or organization says or wants. Never has such a thing even been mentioned to me.
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Really appreciate you replying on here, Karin.
Is there a reason that editorial boards around the country have consistently backed Ed Reform policies and candidates in spite of immediate, long-standing, and vocal opposition from actual educators? From what we’ve seen, editorial boards unanimously supported the No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Every Student Succeeds Acts as well as the Common Core. They pushed high stakes testing for students, teachers, and schools, that have had been staggeringly costly yet produced no benefits (many on here, myself included, would argue that they have in fact been destructive). They far more often than not endorse the candidates whose policies are most at odds with those of educators. We know the Bush 43 Administration paid editorial writers large sums to extol No Child Left Behind, and we know many billionaires (like Bill Gates) have paid numerous organizations, including media, in exchange for friendly treatment of their (and his) educational agenda. Ed Reform efforts have failed repeatedly, but they continue to get soft handling by editorial boards. If they are truly independent, and I take you at your word, what makes them so beholden to the Ed Reform movement?
Great respect for your appearance here.
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@Ohio Algebra Teacher: You ask very important questions, and of course I can’t speak to all or even most editorial boards. It’s a lot to try to answer here; perhaps I should write an column or op-ed that addresses these issues.
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Thank you, Karin. I’d be very interested just to know how conclusions have been formed at the L.A. Times. Do you guys reflect on how your opinions from earlier times have worked out? An article could be very enlightening. Thanks again.
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Ms. Klein,
Thank you for coming here to ensure we understand the absolute purity of the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board’s endorsements.
The next time you and your colleagues meet to discuss such an endorsement at the Pacific Dining Car or Geoffrey’s Malibu – wherever – please consider the following: the guy parking your car there and the men and women bringing you water, preparing your food and washing the dishes send their kids to LA schools. They drive or take buses a long way to get to their workplaces to serve you, the wealthy. A lot of their kids walk to a school within a short distance of home. Driving their kids to different strip mall charter school businesses is sometimes not an option. A neighborhood school is best.
However, when you endorse school privatizers like Ref Rodriguez and Nick Melvoin, you are doing your part to move our city in the direction of places like Chicago, where neighborhood school closures are now de rigeur. School “choice” has resulted in precious few real options for many families there, and schools in the poorest neighborhoods are the ones impacted. (I am unsure as to whether or not the correlation between poverty and standardized test scores has ever entered your board’s discussions.)
People who profit from privatizing schools in our nation have misappropriated the Civil Rights banner and have used it to re-segregate our schools and punish kids in poor neighborhoods further. Please stop contributing to this false flag operation.
Sincerely,
rhee’s tape dispenser
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Why not “rhee’s toilet-paper dispenser”? It makes more sense. :o)
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Maybe thinking of masking tape
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How about 100 yards of Duct Tape wrapped around her head?
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Uh, we meet in a conference room on the third floor of the Times building downtown that’s shared with a couple of other departments. It has a few framed photos on the wall, and we do get free water. I guess in the near future, we will be meeting in new office quarters in El Segundo. Not sure where you got the idea that journalists are people of wealth who live deep-pocketed, expense-account lives.
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