Read the Network for Public Education round-up of articles about the UTLA Strike andits national significance.
The cat is out of the bag. The billionaires bought the LAUSD school board. The school board is intent on disrupting the district while starving schools of what they need: reduced class sizes (some classes have nearly 50 students); a full-time nurse; counselors; and other essential staff and programs. Instead of supporting the teachers, the school board majority is fighting them, backing the hedge fund financier who is superintendent of schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just re-tweeted this dance video of LAUSD striking teachers and students boycotting school (student participation is key here), dancing as one, doing a flashmob line dance in front of their school (Venice High, I think).
Each dance move communicates a different contract negotiation talking point:
FIRST STEP: “Reach up and lower those class sizes.” — reach and pull down motion
…
THIRD STEP: “Scoop into that billion-dollar reserve.” — two-hand scooping motion
Then Aretha Franklin music kicks in. Watch it. It’ll give ya chills:
The apoplectic right-wing response tweets below this video give you an idea of its effectiveness.
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Fantastic, love it!
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Political office holders and seekers at all levels of government now need to face the fact that their stance on charter schools can make or break their election: Candidates’ stances on charter schools were THE deciding factor in the elections of California’s new governor and state superintendent of education; it is also THE central focus in the current race for Mayor of Chicago that is to be decided on February 26, and it is a core focus of striking Los Angeles teachers. Democrats can no longer count on the votes of public school teaches who have been betrayed by Democrats from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, both of whom promoted private charter schools at the expense of genuine public schools. Even the general public, and especially parents of public school children, have caught on to the lie told by Democrats and Republicans alike that charter schools are “public” schools just because they recruit public school children. And the courts are catching on, too: The state supreme courts of New York and Washington have ruled that charter schools are private schools because they are operated by private boards that are not elected by the public. Democrats are going to have to make a choice: Do they support genuine public schools and thereby anger the billionaires who back charter schools, or do they continue to support charter schools and thereby lose the votes of their traditional teachers unions and their members? The results of California’s elections show that even when billionaires spend tens of millions of dollars to promote pro-charter school candidates, they can be overwhelmed by the votes of angry teacher union members and parents. And in today’s close elections, losing even a percentage of support can result in an election loss. The writing is on the wall for Democrats on the issue of charter schools, and they had better learn the details of the issue and take a stand. No wishy-washy positions will sway angry voters.
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I agree. But some of it is on the voters — how much do we make a politician’s stance against charter schools and support of public education our litmus test?
I’m at the point where it is my litmus test. In the Democratic primary for Virginia Governor, I wanted Ralph Northam to defeat Tom Perriello because Northam was good on charters and Perriello was a DFER Democrat. Note that Bernie Sanders endorsed Perriello and I absolutely know that Perriello was better than Northam when it came to other progressive issues.
I decided I didn’t care whether Perriello was strongly endorsed by Bernie Sanders and voted the right way on other progressive issues if he was just going to help enable the privatizers by giving “progressive” credibility to charter schools. And the fact that he went down to defeat delighted me even though I knew Northam was not nearly as good as Perriello on other issues I also cared about. Because public education is now my litmus test. It’s not a moral stand, it’s just what I decided was the issue I cared about more than anything else.
To me, there is a huge difference between “supporting higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes” and calling for a moratorium on charter schools because their very existence undermines public schools. Giving teachers a raise and reducing class sizes is nice, but it is putting a band aid on the real problem. And even worse, I think charters absolutely undermine any chance of helping find a solution to the real problem. LA teachers can get raises and smaller class sizes after the strike and that will be nice. But what happens in a few years when ed reformers say “we gave you what you wanted, but look over here at these charters that are getting better results than you — you just wasted all that money that we told you was unnecessary.”
As long as charters are free to cherry pick the disadvantaged students who are easiest to teach, and as long as charters are free to do whatever it takes to “help” a student they don’t want to teach find the fastest route back to a public school, they are going to “win” the public relations war as to who is doing a better job — unless progressive politicians stop this in its tracks. If you give parents a choice of a charter that doesn’t have to spend money on kids they don’t want to teach, and a public school that has to spend money on the most difficult-to-teach students, it won’t be surprising if many parents choose the charter. And as long as their kids are the right kind of kids and the charters also “choose” their child, they are happy. Much as the people who used to pay for less expensive health insurance were very happy before Obamacare. It worked great because they just happened to be the kind of healthy and inexpensive to treat health care consumers that private insurance companies wanted to insure.
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NYC Parent,
You are 100% correct. Voters, especially the ones with children and grand children in public schools, have to make charters a litmus test. And by litmus test I don’t mean accepting mealy mouthed evasive garbage about supporting teachers. You either support public schools or charters. Support for school privatization is an automatic disqualifier for any candidate for me. As the parent of two public school students and the spouse of public school teacher why on earth would I support the privatizers.
I live in a Republican stronghold in Georgia. I have gotten very blunt with people in the community when they complain about overcrowding in our schools. I immediately tell them that they as long as they keep voting for charter and voucher loving Republicans they’ve forfeited the right to complain about our overcrowded schools.
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GREAT response: “…as long as they keep voting for charter and voucher loving Republicans they’ve forfeited the right to complain about our overcrowded schools.”
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Absi-fricking-lutely everything!
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Not one dime of my tax dollars to fund Charter Schools. Parents that don’t want to send their children to Public Schools, send them to already existing private schools!
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Is it fair to require parents who choose to opt-out of public schools, to continue to pay the taxes to support the schools that their children are not utilizing? Why not give families that opt-out, a partial rebate on their school taxes, in the form of a voucher?
Your statement that parents send their children to already existing private schools is partially correct. SOME parents, who have the financial resources to afford private schools, will utilize them. (Some parents home-school). Not all families can afford the tuition at non-public schools.
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That would be okay, I suppose, if I do not have to pay taxes for war or the Wall or anything I don’t like.
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Charles,
Do you understand the notion of a public good?
The reason that we have public libraries and public highways and public utilities is because most people in the country believe in public goods.
If your kind of thinking had won, there would be no rural electricity, water, sewage or phone service. At least, not until the few people living in those far out rural areas had banded together and figured out how to pay the millions (in current dollars probably billions) to bring those services to their farms.
Here is what the most selfish and greedy people do not realize. Public schools educate children who will grow up to be citizens of our country and do the work that makes our country strong. To pretend that we all do not benefit when we have good public schools is nonsense.
Do you also believe that if you are single or no longer have children in the public school system because they have aged out, that your taxes should be reduced and you should get your voucher for $10,000 or $15,000 to spend on whatever you decide is more important than having our nation’s children educated?
And, since you seem so concerned about anyone paying for a service they don’t use — should we now charge parents with 5 children far more for their taxes than children with one or 2 children?
How is it fair — in the world that you want to create — that a parent with one child is FORCED to pay for the education of parents with 3 or 4 or even more children? Should our country tell all parents, after 2 children you are on your own because Charles says we shouldn’t have to pay for anything that we don’t directly benefit from?
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In Charles’ world, people without children would not pay taxes for public schools.
That would end public education.
And I won’t pay for war or the Wall or anything Trump proposes.
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I think it would be very helpful if folks here could define what is a “public good”. Economists use a definition of “public good” that makes a light house a public good but a school not a public good.
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Unlike previous teacher walk-outs, the California strike is in a blue state that has disinvested in its public schools. It is important to make the public understand that among the issues, charter drain that is imposed by unmitigated charter expansion is one of the root causes of the lack of funds. The continuous charter expansion in the state is the result of the direct interference of billionaires that reject public education. Charter expansion is not the will of the people. It is the will of biased billionaires that despise unions along with democratic governance. and they do not care about the quality of education for other people’s children.
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Retired teacher-
That is the whole issue in a nutshell…well said!
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Yep! This is why support of charters — even “good public charters” — is now my litmus test when voting. I’m like those one-issue rabid anti-abortion voters. Nothing is going to change until charters are no longer around to push the lie that they get better results, with large class sizes and less funding, while teaching the exact same students that are in public schools.
My ideal is that every Democrat running for office has to state whether they endorse the NAACP’s moratorium on charters or not.
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This is the nation-wide game. Put people in charge of public institutions that they actually intend to destroy. Competence at running things to help people is a liability.
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As part of our strike, we will be walking every neighborhood in Los Angeles on Wednesday and asking our communities to sign a public petition demanding a charter school cap.
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Great idea!
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LAUSD “teachers descended on the downtown Charter Schools Association and surrounded the building”- Jeff Bryant at Alternet (“How a Rising Tide of Teacher Strikes is Finally Exposing the Corrupt Privatizing Behind the Charter School Agenda”.
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