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Like many districts nationwide, Los Angeles’s public school system was “broke on purpose.”
It’s suffered through decades of underfunding and anti-government rhetoric—”bad teachers.” Despite being the world’s fifth largest economy, California is 41st in the nation in per pupil funding.
It’s also bore the brunt of the charter school industry’s rapid growth. Los Angeles Unified School District has more charter schools than any other district in the country and now spends nearly $600 million annually to prop up a competing, parallel sector of privately managed schools.
That’s why what the city’s teachers did earlier this year was so powerful.
As a new report from Reclaim Our Schools LA outlines, “The Los Angeles strike resulted in a stunning array of substantive victories well beyond the scope of a typical labor agreement.”
Not only did teachers win pay increases, but they also won more nurses, counselors, and librarians in schools; smaller class sizes; reductions in standardized testing; an end to random searches of students in some schools; and more.
If you’re wondering what democracy looks like in the age of Citizens United, voter suppression, and Trump, what’s being dubbed “bargaining for the common good” is a glimpse.
Read Building the Power to Reclaim Our Schools for the story of how teachers and the community organized and worked together to use government for the common good.
Thanks for reading,
Jeremy Mohler
Communications Director
In the Public Interest |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane That guy in the front holding the sign is a hoot. I’ll bet his students love him. CBK
Van Zandt will be a wonderful addition to NPE’s program. He has always supported equality and social justice. I recall Van Zandt was the galvanizing force behind a musicians’ boycott in South Africa during the apartheid era. He and other like minded musicians performed a single called. “Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15a0C2wLbDw
Exactly right
Little Stevie is with us
Love Stevie’s song! And way to go, UTLA! This is what democracy looks like!
Off topic- In May 2019, Moscow Mitch’s brother-in-law was confirmed as the director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., part of the Labor Dept.
More clearing of the swamp. . . not!
It’s interesting to contrast this first-rate report with the neo-liberal, anti-union ravings of faux-progressives such as Ben Austin.(subject of a recent embarrassing private email debacle & expose.)
Ben Austin, who used to work under corporate ed reform Mayors Riordan and Villaraigosa, is still livid about, how during last January’s strike, L.A. Mayor Garcetti made implicit and explicit comments, and took actions — acting as mediator to end the strike — in support of not just UTLA, but also of the parents and community that overwhelmingly backed UTLA and the union’s goals (82% favorability, if memory serves).
Austin told THE 74 that “instead of praising (striking) teachers,” Mayor Garcetti should have been “focused on the students.”
Then and now, Austin has been constantly deriding Garcetti’s role as a mediator in the on-going and ultimately successful talks to end the strike. Rather than praise Garcetti, Austin instead told THE 74 that, in doing so, Garcetti was knowingly acting “as an agent of special interests.”
(“special interests” = 32,000 L.A teachers … Sweet Jesus!!)
https://www.the74million.org/article/welcome-but-complicated-mayor-garcetti-gov-newsom-and-the-pressure-to-end-the-los-angeles-teacher-strike/
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THE 74:
“Austin said rather than praising teachers, Garcetti should provide public assurance that he’s focused on students, a group both the union and L.A. Unified say they’re fighting for. He added that the mayor could resurface topics — such as teacher quality and increased accountability on all schools, not just charters — that are not in the contract negotiations and are now buried by what has become a politicized fight over salary, class size and charter caps.
“Garcetti engaging in these talks ‘as an agent of special interests wouldn’t ‘be productive, or, frankly, statesman-like,’ Austin said.”
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Okay, I’ll bite, Ben. What else should Eric have done and said instead that would been “more productive and statesmen-like”?
Should Mayor Garcetti have gone all–Matt-Bevin** (SEE BELOW***) or gone *all-Michelle-Rhee, or all-Scott-Walker on them, and called them selfish, greedy, corrupt defenders of a failed status quo who are putting adult interests ahead of children’s interests?
Would that have been more “productive,” and led to an earlier resolution of the strike?
I don’t think so (to quote McCauley Culkin in HOME ALONE).
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Austin shared the same idiotic sentiments in the recent private email that came to light, and which basically called for a declaration of war on UTLA:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-edu-secret-plan-for-charters-20190702-story.html
NOTE how, in the article, all the corporate ed. reformists who were asked about it made comments distancing themselves from the contents of Austin’s email.
Mind you, this distancing is most certainly NOT because Austin said anything with which any of them disagreed. On the contrary, it’s because Ben wrote and said out loud all that super-secret stuff that all the charter folks had all made a pact to keep to themselves. Their thinking was and is that, if certain progressive groups, individuals and voters knew of or caught on to this true agenda — the one that the leaked Austin email aired to the public — they’d immediately (and rightly, imo) turn their backs on Austin and his school privatization allies.
Ben & Co. most assuredly DO want an annihilation of UTLA. The head honchos in the charter world and their billionaire backers would be ecstatic if this ever happened, BUT GEEZ BEN!!! YOUR’E NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY THIS STUFF OUT LOUD, DUDE!!! NOW, WE’RE GONNA LOSE ALL OUR PROGRESSIVE ALLIES WHOM WE TRICKED INTO ALLYING WITH US!!!!
UTLA just put out a great animated tweet on this embarrassing email expose:
(with a great circus calliope music score … slide up the VOLUME bar)
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**Kentucky Governor Bevin gave a classic on-camera statement were he incredibly *”guaranteed” reporters that, during the state-wide teachers’ rally, that until numbers of Kentucky’s children were being molested as a result, with the blame to be placed squarely on the irresponsible and selfish striking teachers. (It sounds as if Bevin were hoping for this to be true? Sheesh!)
https://www.wcpo.com/news/state/state-kentucky/bevin-children-were-sexually-assaulted-poisoned-because-of-teacher-strikes
Bevin’s tortured logic: those kids had to be left home at alone while their parents worked, while the schools closed, and now hordes of child molesters, aware of the teachers’ rally, would now jump on the opportunity to invade those unattended-by-parents homes, and then go to town on the kids. When asked to produce such instances of victimization, he, of course, never did. I mean, during those no-school, summer months — where those same exact conditions also exist — have there ever been instances of child molesters doing likewise?
(ONE MORE THING: Ben Austin’s kids attend Warner Avenue Elementary, a traditional, UTLA-staffed school in the very upscale neighborhood of Westwood, where he serves on that school’s School Site Council alongside parents, and also alongside UTLA teachers, the latter group whom Austin constantly attacks as “special interests” and part of a “failed status quo” who care only about themselves, and not the students whom they teach.
I’m not revealing any secrets here, as Austin has mentioned his serving, and the name of his kids’ school multiple times in public.
If I were one of the teachers — or heck, one of the parents — serving on Warner Avenue’s School Site Council, I would, at the next meeting, verbally rip Austin from stem-to-stern.—
“Why you don’t you tell us that ‘failed status quo’ stuff to our faces, Dude?”
— and then demand that he resign, or call for a vote expelling Austin from that body, telling him that he represents neither the Warner Avenue parents nor its teachers, but instead is the useful idiot of the corporate ed. reform privatizing billionaires that pay his salary.)
Diane, the picture of you and Stevie together was my screen saver for several weeks.
Thank you! I am honored.
Here’s that AWESOME pic:
This is what the truly beautiful people look like, folks!
Love you, Steve!!!! https://www.today.com/video/steven-van-zandt-explains-why-teachers-get-in-free-on-his-music-tour-1220578883872
A couple years ago, I was notified by my Assistant Principal that she was going to be doing a formal evaluation of my American lit class. So, the day she did that evaluation, I brought in my guitar and a projector and did a lesson on continuities between West African dance and poetry and song, on the one hand, and field hollers, work songs, spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, soul, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, reggae, hip hop, and modern country, on the other. Her response: “Well, that was not what I expected.” One of the awesome things about the music of Stevie van Zandt is that he understands, in his bones, where this music comes from. You want to understand American music, you have to be a disciple of soul and ITS roots. Or, as Paul Simon put it in “Under African Skies”: “This is the story of how we begin to remember.”
You didn’t break out the scripted test prep lessons? Good for you!
A “great” teacher can always put together some bullshit rationale that follows the policies and guidelines that will bamboozle an adminimal. Did it my whole career and I never came close to being a “great” teacher.
Well, at that point, I was thinking, if you want to fire me so that you can hire some neophyte just out of college who will send his or her days doing test prep, have at it. What’s happening all across the country is that some few teachers push back against the standards-and-testing madness and insist upon actually teaching their subject.