The New York Times editorial and opinion pages have been a cheering section for charter expansion for years. I have tried and failed to get articles about the dangers of privatization on the op-Ed page. The last time I tried, my article was rejected, then posted online by the Washington Post (whose editorial board also favors charter schools). After that rejection, I swore I would never again submit an article because I knew it would be turned down. Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times to find the article below. Miriam Pawel, an independent historian and a contributing opinion writer for the Times, was allowed to explain the real dynamics behind the teachers’ strike: demographic change; high poverty rates; overcrowded classes; underfunding of the schools; and an aggressive charter industry, led by Eli Broad and other billionaires, willing to spend vast sums to privatize more public schools and kick out the unions.
Online, thisis the subtitle of the article: “Can California provide sufficient resources to support an effective public education system? Or will charter schools cripple it?”
What is so remarkable about this article is: 1. The New York Times printed it; 2. Pawel connected the dots among demographic change, underfunding of the schools, bloated class sizes, and the district’s deference to charter expansion; 3. Pawel acknowledged that the rapid growth of charters is the direct result of the intervention of billionaires like Broad, who poured $54 million into two losing statewide races last fall. I couldn’t have said it better.
Miriam Pawel writes:
LOS ANGELES — For decades, public schools were part of California’s lure, key to the promise of opportunity. Forty years ago, with the lightning speed characteristic of the Golden State, all of that changed.
In the fall of 1978, after years of bitter battles to desegregate Los Angeles classrooms, 1,000 buses carried more than 40,000 students to new schools. Within six months, the nation’s second-largest school district lost 30,000 students, a good chunk of its white enrollment. The busing stopped; the divisions deepened.
Those racial fault lines had helped fuel the tax revolt that led to Proposition 13, the sweeping tax-cut measure that passed overwhelmingly in June 1978. The state lost more than a quarter of its total revenue. School districts’ ability to raise funds was crippled; their budgets shrank for the first time since the Depression. State government assumed control of allocating money to schools, which centralized decision-making in Sacramento.
Public education in California has never recovered, nowhere with more devastating impact than in Los Angeles, where a district now mostly low-income and Latino has failed generations of children most in need of help. The decades of frustration and impotence have boiled over in a strike with no clear endgame and huge long-term implications. The underlying question is: Can California ever have great public schools again?
The struggle in Los Angeles, a district so large it educates about 9 percent of all students in the state, will resonate around California. Oakland teachers are on the verge of a strike vote. Sacramento schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. The housing crisis has compounded teacher shortages. Los Angeles, like many districts, is losing students, and therefore dollars, even as it faces ballooning costs for underfunded pensions.
California still ranks low in average per-pupil spending, roughly half the amount spent in New York. California legislators have already filed bills proposing billions of dollars in additional aid, one of many competing pressures that face the new governor, Gavin Newsom, as he begins negotiations on his first state budget.
Unlike other states where teachers struck last year, California is firmly controlled by Democrats, for whom organized labor is a key ally. And the California teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbying force in Sacramento.
On paper, negotiations between the 31,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District center on traditional issues: salaries that have not kept pace, classes of more than 40 students, counselors and nurses with staggering caseloads. But the most potent and divisive issue is not directly on the bargaining table: the future of charter schools, which now enroll more than 112,000 students, almost one-fifth of all K-through-12 students in the district. They take their state aid with them, siphoning off $600 million a year from the district. The 224 independent charters operate free from many regulations, and all but a few are nonunion.
When California authorized the first charter schools in 1992 as a small experiment, no one envisioned that they would grow into an industry, now educating 10 percent of public school students in the state. To counter demands for greater regulation and transparency, charter advocates have in recent years poured millions into political campaigns. Last year, charter school lobbies spent $54 million on losing candidates for governor and state superintendent of education.
In Los Angeles, they have had more success. After his plan to move half of the Los Angeles district students into charter schools failed to get traction, the billionaire and charter school supporter Eli Broad and a group of allies spent almost $10 million in 2017 to win a majority on the school board. The board rammed through the appointment of a superintendent, Austin Beutner, with no educational background. Mr. Beutner, a former investment banker, is the seventh in 10 years and has proposed dividing the district into 32 “networks,” a so-called portfolio plan designed in part by the consultant who engineered the radical restructuring of Newark schools.
“In my 17 years working with labor unions, I have been called on to help settle countless bargaining disputes in mediation,” wrote Vern Gates, the union-appointed member of the fact-finding panel called in to help mediate the Los Angeles stalemate last month. “I have never seen an employer that was intent on its own demise.”
It’s a vicious cycle: The more overcrowded and burdened the regular schools, the easier for charters to recruit students. The more students the district loses, the less money, and the worse its finances. The more the district gives charters space in traditional schools, the more overcrowded the regular classrooms.
Enrollment in the Los Angeles school district has declined consistently for 15 years, increasing the competition for students. It now educates just under a half-million students. More than 80 percent are poor, about three-quarters are Latino, and about one-quarter are English-language learners. On most state standardized tests, more than one-third fall below standards.
For 20 years, Katie Safford has taught at Ivanhoe Elementary, a school so atypical and so desirable that it drives up real estate prices in the upscale Silver Lake neighborhood. Ivanhoe parents raise almost a half million a year so that their children can have sports, arts, music and supplies. But parents cannot buy smaller classes or a school nurse. Mrs. Safford’s second-grade classroom is a rickety bungalow slated for demolition. When the floor rotted, the district put carpet over the holes. When leaks caused mold on the walls, Mrs. Safford hung student art to cover stains. The clock always reads 4:20.
“I was born to be a teacher,” Mrs. Safford said. “I have no interest in being an activist. None. But this is ridiculous.” For the first time in her life, she marched last month, one of more than 10,000 teachers and supporters in a sea of red.
Monday she walked the picket line outside a school where just eight of the 456 students showed up. Now her second graders ask the questions no one can answer: When will you be back? How will it end?
It is hard to know, when the adults have so thoroughly abdicated their responsibility for so long. Last week, the school board directed the superintendent to draw up a plan examining ways to raise new revenue.
This strike comes at a pivotal moment for California schools, amid recent glimmers of hope. Demographic shifts have realigned those who vote with those who rely on public services like schools. Voters approved state tax increases to support education in 2012, and again in 2016. In the most recent election, 95 of 112 school bond issues passed, a total of over $15 billion. The revised state formula drives more money into districts with more low-income students and English learners. Total state school aid increased by $23 billion over the past five years, and Governor Newsom has proposed another increase.
If Los Angeles teachers can build on those gains, the victory will embolden others to push for more, just as teachers on the rainy picket lines this week draw inspiration from the successful #RedforEd movements around the country. The high stakes have drawn support from so many quarters, from the Rev. James Lawson, the 90-year-old civil rights icon, to a “Tacos for Teachers” campaign to fund food on the picket lines.
If this fight for public education in Los Angeles fails, it will consign the luster of California schools to an ever more distant memory.
Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel), a contributing opinion writer, is an author, journalist and independent historian.
Exactly. I was disappointed in last night’s coverage of the strike on the CBS evening news. The strike was portrayed as a parochial issue—more money for teachers, more spending on support services—and completely left out the issues of privatization, charters, and high-stakes testing. We must link their fight to the big picture and you and Miriam do.
…as you…
Same of this AM Wall Street Journal. Published a piece by the Superintendent, not a word about charters except praise for parents who want their kids out of “failing public schools.” Also, as expected, rants about teacher alaries, pensions and a district short on money. Blah, Blah, blah. I want to see more PR for the amount of money charters drain from public schools. Diane’s book is really needed.
Same of this AM Wall Street Journal. Published a piece by the Superintendent, not a word about charters except praise for parents who want their kids out of “failing public schools.” Also, as expected, rants about teacher alaries, pensions and a district short on money. Blah, Blah, blah. I want to see more PR for the amount of money charters drain from public schools.
I agree. I think if there were progressive politicians explaining how much charters drain from public schools because they cherry pick the cheapest to teach students — and said that over and over again — it would become part of the discussion. Instead, progressives are basically giving cover to right wing pro-charter propaganda when they keep insisting there are “good public charters” just like the Wall Street Journal says.
The silence of almost every progressive politician about the issue of charters in the LA strike, and the outright refusal of all progressives to embrace the NAACP’s moratorium on charters — which should have been a no brainer — does not give me confidence that anything is going to change.
Vice News had a detailed report on the LA strike. They interviewed teachers and nurses. One teacher has forty-four in her class, and she moved her desk out of the room to make more space for students. Most schools have a nurse one day per week. They often treat students in the hall, bathroom or under stairs. They said it is impossible to maintain confidentiality under these conditions. Vice News also discussed the impact of Prop 13 and charter drain on school budgets.
Vice News did not discuss the problem of billionaire meddling and the attempt to privatize a large portion of the district. Billionaires should not be allowed to undermine or circumvent democratic self determination. Billionaires should not be buying our policy. Billionaires should not be installing puppets in key leadership positions. Much of the battle in Los Angeles is about having a government of, by and for the people, not just billionaire oligarchs.
Well-said, retired teacher.
If ed reformers are such great public education advocates, why has public education lost so much ground since they’ve been in power?
One of two things is true- either they’re not really public education advocates or they’re lousy public education advocates, and we should find and hire some better ones.
They never seem to actually get around to improving public schools, what with all the union-busting and creating new forms for undemocratic governance and “reinventing education”.
Maybe we should hire people who actually intend to add some value to the public schools we have.
In Ohio, a state that follows every single ed reform fad and directive these people cook up, they just lowered the score for every public school in the state.
This is the sum total contribution of ed reformers in this state for the last 8 years- they created new tests and lowered all the school scores. They offered absolutely no additional funding for the new requirements and no practical support or assistance of any kind. They put in a punishment and yet another ridiculous new measurement system.
They’re not returning any value to our schools and there are tens of thousands of ed reformers on public payrolls. We can and should replace them with people who support our schools and add some practical value.
My own public school system put in the Common Core mandate.
In return for this capitulation to national ed reform lobbyists, Ohio ed reformers cut their funding and lowered their ranking, which opens the door for them to flood the state with more low quality charters, which they have done for the last decade.
We are paying thousands of state employees who are actively harming the public schools our children attend. We should hire better people.
“Hire better people”… with Fordham, other deformers and ALEC’s legislators in charge.?….IMO, they either wouldn’t recognize employees with ethical values and quality credentials or they would reject them so that Ohioans can continue to be fleeced.
we should stop hiring and start eliminating: we are truly overwhelmed by non-teacher personnel
should say MANAGEMENT personnel
Recently, someone posted on our neighborhood listserv regarding a possible strike in Oakland. The poster was concerned about pointing out that charters have caused so much financial drain that it’s impacting the budget, which is true. They made a point about split families; families who have members enrolled in both charters and traditional schools at the same time. What sort of messaging should they get to support the teachers? Should they keep the district child at home and send the charter child to school? Should they keep them both at home? The poster was concerned about “alienating” split families, who then, in turn, might not support the strike; in my view, posting honest, factual information about why teachers are going on strike isn’t about creating bad feelings. I don’t own people’s feelings; they have to decide for themselves what to do, and if that situation creates uncomfortableness, that’s just the reality of what’s going on. It’s nothing compared the discomfort that teachers have had to deal with for so long.
The NYT’s columnist, David Leonhardt, won’t change his tune. IMO, he, David Brock and Neera Tanden (Gates-funded Center for American Progress) carry freight for neo-liberals, which means democracy is as irrelevant to them as the position that I believe the NAACP, ACLU, BLM and the SPLC have- segregation schools of the south have been relabeled charter and spread to the rest of the country.
The NAACP called on a moratorium on charters a long time ago.
Where are the progressive politicians signing on to this? Where are the progressive politicians who even care enough to understand why charters are so harmful to public school system.
Dr. Ravitch deserves apologies from many institutions and people, Brookings, the NYT, Frederick Hess,… Her mouth has been taped shut because the bigger the threat, the greater the demand for her to be silenced.
Eternal gratitude to Diane for peeling off the tape, and finding voice over and over again.
I am reminded of Ferris Bueller, “Apolgies? Anyone, anyone…?”
“But the most potent and divisive issue is not directly on the bargaining table: the future of charter schools, which now enroll more than 112,000 students, almost one-fifth of all K-through-12 students in the district. They take their state aid with them, siphoning off $600 million a year from the district. The 224 independent charters operate free from many regulations, and all but a few are nonunion.”
This is the issue that is most ignored by almost all the progressive and Democrat politicians who are offering support to the striking teachers. They seem to keep making it about wages and perhaps giving more funding to schools. But the elephant in the room is that as long as we have a system where charters can siphon off the cheapest to educate students but have absolutely no long term or even short term obligation to them if they don’t want to teach them, the school system will lose and the students and families the charters refuse to teach — who are always the most vulnerable ones — will lose.
It is about appealing to the inner Trump “I get mine and i don’t care what happens to those ‘other’ students” which billionaires have tried so hard to do. They couch their propaganda by holding up those students who they are willing to teach and pretending that they want to offer this to all students, even though their high attrition rates and the fact that there are disproportionately few students with severe disabilities make that a laughable lie.
Parallel schools that destroy public schools is what Paul Weyrich called for in his training manual (Theocracy Watch). Weyrich founded Koch’s Heritage foundation and ALEC and, the religious right.
That’s why, when neo-liberals support the agenda, the public must be made to understand the threat to democracy comes from both limousine liberals like David Leonhardt and Neera Tanden and, from the hard right.
Not just from limousine liberals.
The threat comes from progressives who refuse to say what is obvious to the rest of us: “charters undermine public schools and there are no “good public charters” except for the ones who most ruthlessly get rid of the randomly selected lottery winners, even though simply by requiring parents to enter a lottery a charter already has an advantage over public schools.”
HRC is the only leading politician I ever heard make this clear (during a South Carolina town hall meeting). She made it clearer than I have ever heard any politician make it clear, and then she was excoriated and shut up.
I would have expected more progressive politicians than HRC to do the same and not shut up, but instead they do more harm then good by pushing the myth that there still ARE “good public charters” that should be admired and praised for their good work.
HRC made a great statement about charters in SC, but it caused such a backlash among her backers that her education advisor Ann O’Leary wrote an article “walking back” HRC’s critique of charters.
O’Leary is now Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff.
I have very low expectations from HRC or Ann O’Leary. They are not leaders of the progressive political movement and they shut up when their backers didn’t like it.
But I DO expect a lot more from politicians who keep telling us they are progressives. They are the ones who should be calling for a moratorium on charters and using their bully pulpits to educate America about how charters getting good results are getting rid of students they don’t want to teach and throwing them back to public schools.
It is progressive politicians who should be embracing the NAACP’s moratorium on charters. Instead, I just keep hearing them repeating the same DFER talking points in which there are “good public charters” that should be praised for their good work without ever mentioning the huge advantages those “good public charters” have to simply kick out kids they don’t want to teach. Just like HRC said. She shut up, but that doesn’t explain why all the progressive politicians also remain completely silent on this issue.
A hedge fund that “destroys newspapers” has made a bid for Gannett-owned USA Today.
Going forward, the richest 0.1%, anti-democracy owners of news organizations like Sinclair, will be all that remains.
While she might be correct about Prop 13, I must disagree because property tax in California before Prop 13 was so high and climbing so fast that I as a property owner back then was paying more in property tax each year than on my mortgage payments.
And while the mortgage payments stayed the same, the property tax grew at a frightening pace on an annual basis. I actually feared that the day might come that I wouldn’t earn enough money to pay the property tax and keep my home. I remember one year, I had to take out a loan to pay my bills because the property tax was eating up so much of my income as a public school teacher just starting out.
No matter the reason behind Prop 13, it was a blessing for Californians that owned their own homes.
Getting rid of Prop 13 is not the solution. California must come up with other streams of revenue to fund its public school system and not punish home owners in the state.
Prop 13 did not freeze property tax. Property tax is still allowed to go up 1% a year based on the purchase price of a home and every time a home sells, the new property tax is based on the new purchase price.
So a home that original sold for $100k when it was sold new might have been resold several times since Prop 13 and each time the property tax was based on the resale price not the original cost of the home when it was new.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, fall into the manipulating hands of the enemies of Prop 13 who have been trying to get rid of it since it was passed by the voters. I do not want to see my property tax climbing like a rocket headed to the moon again like it was before Prop 13.
But there are also commercial properties that have never been sold, that are worth much more than that 1% reset. That is the area I think should be reformed.
You are talking about property tax on commercial properties vs a different set of rules for home owners … yes?
Commercial properties includes rental properties.
Maybe commercial properties could be taxed based on how much profit they earn instead of on the value of the property. The difference between net and gross.
“What’s at stake”- the protection of information so that it stays out of the hands of tech tyrants is a vital part of this fight also.
Bill Browder (Magnitsky Act) identified the New Horizons Prize funded by Mark Z-berg and Yuri Milner as a threat to technology research transfer to dictatorships. It’s dangerous to give men like Z-berg access to information in all contexts because there is no guarantee that it won’t used against democracies.
Z-berg’s invested in Facebook. Milner’s invested in 23 and Me.
That’s a lot of data that can be used for bad purpose..
Great article although I take issue with this statement: “When California authorized the first charter schools in 1992 as a small experiment, no one envisioned that they would grow into an industry, now educating 10 percent of public school students in the state.” The privatization forces “envisioned” exactly that: an industry profiting from children.
Andrea,
The charter industry knew, but everyone else was fooled.
Bill Gates knew. Then, Z-berg saw the data collection possibilities.
I agree, the ball was dropped from the beginning. The unions missed it and others too.you get greedy private interests in on basically free money for them to get fatter and you have a powerful constituency. Parents liked it because they thought their kids would get special treatment but they just got segregated. It will take more than one or two teacher strikes to stop these greedy people. Maybe a national teacher!s strike. You have nationally certified teachers, why not a strike for teacher rights nationally. I like it
They had a business plan, not an education plan.
The LA strike is about an ongoing battle within the Democratic Party about the desirability of privatizing public services: between the “Reform/Reinventing Government” wing of the party that has embraced the idea that the private sector should take over more and more government functions and the “Roosevelt” wing of the party who sees a strong Federal government as necessary to eliminate poverty and racism… and to eliminate the economic divide that has emerged since voters agreed with Reagan’s proposition that “government is the problem”.
Like President Trump and the Tea Party wing who want to diminish the effectiveness of government through a shut down, the LA school board seems to be intent on ruining what is left of the public school system in Los Angeles by encouraging a strike. I thought the most chilling quote was from mediator Vern Gates who said “I have never seen an employer that was intent on its own demise.” He might want to look at what is going on in DC where the GOP seems intent on bringing about the demise of our government.
Trump said he hopes that the federal employees will look for other jobs, and they won’t be replaced.
Trump lies about his concern for citizen safety while TSA employees receive no pay.
Trump does what the Koch’s tell him to do to establish oligarchy.
The Koch’s MIT has had a Russian oligarch on the board since 2013.
The founder of ShareBlue and Media Matters has links to the staff of the charter school-loving Center for American Progress. Neither of the two news outlets, supposedly liberal and Democratic, has posted anything about the grassroots action steered by labor in L.A. and aimed at saving public education. Nothing is posted on the home pages, nothing under “local”, “grassroots” nor, “education” tabs.
The question that establishment Dems aka the Gates-funded Center for American Progress should be asked is, ” Do you have and, did you have in the past, plans to ignore or give aid to oligarchs in the tech industry and financial sector in their takeover of the public school system and public pensions.