If you can make sense of this editorial in the Los Angeles Times, you are a whole lot smarter than me. It speaks disparagingly of the board president, then endorses her.
It chastises the school board for failing to exercise oversight of the city’s booming charter sector, but then rejects Steve Zimmer, the only school board member who had the courage to propose responsible supervision of the charter sector. The Times is flabbergasted that Zimmer called for a moratorium on new charters until the board developed a policy for determining whether they were meeting their obligations to students and the public. L.A. already has more charters than any other city in the nation, so it would hardly have been a burden to delay adding more until the board figured out how to manage its portfolio.
The Times cares not a whit that Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and their allies came up with $2.5 million to choose the next board. In their eyes, it’s okay for big money to overwhelm the political process. They worry not at all about the corruption of democracy.
They pay lip service to “reform.” But what do they mean by “reform.” More private entrepreneurs taking public dollars without supervision? More deregulation of the monied interests? More teachers fired because they teach students with disabilities or English language learners? More destabilization?
In 2010, the L.A. Times covered itself with shame when it concocted its own value-added methodology, rated thousands of teachers, and then published their names. The president of Math for America,, John Ewing, described this farce as “mathematical intimidation,” in an article in the journal of the American Mathematical Society.
The paper’s present indifference to the corporate purchase of the local school board multiplies its shame.
