Alex Caputo-Pearl responds to agreement reached between California charter school lobby and supports of public schools to revise the charter school law. Until now, the California Charter School Association had blocked all efforts to hold charter schools accountable and to empower local school districts to determine whether charters could open in their area and to evaluate the fiscal impact of charters on existing public schools.
August 29, 2019
Contact: Anna Bakalis 213-305-9654
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Statement on AB 1505 by UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl
“This a great first step in the ongoing, multi-year effort to fix California’s broken charter laws. AB 1505 is the result of collective action and organized collaboration between educators, parents and our communities throughout California. There is a groundswell of resolve, as highlighted by the strikes in Oakland and Los Angeles, that we must end the privatization of our schools and change the course set by the corporate charter lobby 20 years ago.
Countering the California Charter Schools Association’s plan to starve our public schools requires a strategic and long-term plan to fight back. One bill or even a set of bills is not enough. Funded by billionaires who wish to destroy public education, CCSA will double-down their efforts to starve, rank, then flip our public schools into a privately-run, publicly funded network of charters.
This is evidenced by Nick Melvoin’s recent push to rate LAUSD schools on a “Yelp-like” 1-5 scale, and another group of leaked emails, as shared this morning, that the charter lobby plans to remove all kids from public schools and put them into charter schools by 2030. We must continue to fight back the billionaire-funded attack against public education, reinvest in our schools and create a new vision for our schools, one which works for all students — the true stakeholders in the future of our public schools.”
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United Teachers Los Angeles is the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, representing 34,000 educators, nurses, librarians and counselors in Los Angeles Unified School District, as well as more than 1,000 educators in independent charter schools.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m not from California and I don’t know the specifics of this agreement, but speaking in general … I guess I’m opposed to charter reform. It’s like “slavery reform”. You can’t fix a system that shouldn’t exist in the first place. And trying to fix it can, in a perverse way, make it worse because it makes the system itself more intransigent. “See, we responded to your concerns. We fixed the system. Everything is all good now, so what are you complaining about?”
It’s not that we needed laws to make slaver owners be nicer to their slaves, it’s that we needed to get rid of slavery. Likewise, we don’t need to make charters “better”, we need to get rid of charters.
BTW, since I’m going to be accused of comparing charters to slavery, I think there is something valid to the comparison, especially when we’re talking about “no excuses” charters that poor and minority kids supposedly “need”. Obviously there are vast differences – there are not widespread beatings at charters, and charter are not directly about profiting from the unpaid labor of people of color, both are about ultimate control of the bodies, minds and lives of people of color.
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Ugh. To make my last sentence clearer: “Obviously there are vast differences – there are not widespread beatings at charters, and charter are not directly about profiting from the unpaid labor of people of color; however, both are about ultimate control of the bodies, minds and lives of people of color.”
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FYI, the only candidate in the Democratic primary who agrees with you is Bill de Blasio. He actually said straight out that we should do away with charters. And not just “for-profit” charters as the other candidates are almost 100% in agreement about. (I am not sure about Tulsi Gabbard as she might be much more pro-charter than the others — I looked on her website to see her position on education and the only thing she had was the exact same language the ed reformers use: “We need to make sure we are investing in the future of all of our children. In order to invest in our future, we have to provide adequate resources and meaningful accountability to ensure that all our students have equal access to quality education.” I don’t think there is any right wing Republican who couldn’t embrace all of that as it is the kind of rhetoric they use, too.)
Even Bernie’s “anti-charter” position merely calls for a moratorium until there is better oversight and accountability for all charters. As you rightly note, that leaves a lot of leeway. The question that should be put to the candidates is what do they consider “good oversight and accountability”?
In my opinion, the only “good oversight and accountability” comes from having all charters be overseen by the same people that oversee public schools, which then begs the question “why even call them charters?” Any school system can develop a magnet school that students attend via lottery and some school systems do.
The big difference between magnets and charters is that magnets don’t claim to be solving problems and thus deserving of more money while demanding that public schools are wasting it and should have large class sizes just like they do because they have the exact same students.
A public school system with a high performing magnet school is not assumed to have solved the problems of how to teach at risk students and turn them into scholars. Because the students who aren’t in the magnet are their responsibility, too. But a public school system with a high performing charter means that the the idiotic media and co-opted politicians insist that the charter has solved the problem of how to educate at-risk children. And that means that when the charter CEO lobbies government to say ‘give more money to me and please don’t spend more money on public schools because they clearly don’t deserve it and should be able to achieve excellence with large class sizes and inexperienced teachers just like us.”
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EXTREMELY important view: ” I’m opposed to charter reform. It’s like “slavery reform”. You can’t fix a system that shouldn’t exist in the first place.”
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Hi Do you have the other group of leaked emails mentioned here?
thanks David
On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 3:41 PM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” Alex Caputo-Pearl responds to agreement reached > between California charter school lobby and supports of public schools to > revise the charter school law. Until now, the California Charter School > Association had blocked all efforts to hold charter schools” >
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Read the stories (and especially the comments) HERE …
which includes the links to the Kohlhaas articles with links to the BOTH the latest and earlier emails and the email attachments with all the minutes of the secret meetings:
Go HERE:
and HERE:
and HERE:
and HERE:
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David,
See Jack Covey’s list of Kohlhaas posts, posted after your request.
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Alex Caputo-Pearl is a great Crenshaw teacher, a warrior, a big-hearted lion fighting for public schools, teachers, and students. I am so grateful he and his team took over UTLA. He’s so right, the school wars continue, and we must constantly be vigilant and ready to stand our ground against the billionaires trying to obliterate public education. Thank you, Alex!
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Here’s a great tweet / thread that from Jennifer Berkshire’s Twitter, which begins with an “eye-popping” admission from the charter school industry’s secret meetings, contained within one of the emails docs uncovered and released to the public by Michael Kohlhaas, and discovered by Berkshire:
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Also from Jennifer Berkshire’s twitter:
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