The pitched political battle over charter schools no longer serves teachers or students
By Wendy Zacuto
The author is a former LAUSD teacher and charter school principal who runs an education consulting firm in Playa del Rey.
I don’t pretend to understand every nuance of public education, but I can tell you from personal experience that teachers’ strikes are a mess. I’ve viewed the morass of LAUSD from many vantage points: as a K-12 student, as a parent of children who attended an LAUSD magnet school, as a teacher in the district for seven years, and as a charter school principal.
As a student in the 1960s, I received a pretty good education in local public schools. Westchester High was overcrowded and academic counseling was less than perfect, but somehow my friends and I all went on to attend college and lead fruitful lives.
Later, as a parent of an incoming LAUSD kindergartener, I was refused the right to visit my local school. When pressed, I observed that watching educational TV consumed a half-hour of a 2.5-hour kindergarten day. Not on my watch!
When my kids transitioned to attending school for a full day, I began teaching at a local neighborhood school. But when the gifted principal who hired me was replaced after retirement by one who could not pass the principal’s exam, the school spiraled into disarray. I transferred to the magnet school my children attended and taught there four years, observing the night-and-day difference between a school governed by district policies and one with a bit more localized control.
In 1989, as a member of United Teachers of Los Angeles, I went on strike for higher pay. The school was split between teachers who were willing to forgo earnings and those who knew they would benefit from the strike effort but continued to cross the picket lines each day. We deserved the pay raise and we struck for that compensation, but we did nothing to address the other problems rampant in the district.
As of Tuesday, UTLA has dropped many of its demands, maintaining that class size reduction is a key issue for calling a strike. Large class sizes in traditional LAUSD schools are among the issues fueling the flight to charter schools, and the obvious truth is that smaller class sizes make for better teaching and learning environments.
Perhaps LAUSD should open more of its own charter schools to reduce class sizes, but UTLA would have to drop its illogical roadblocks to charter schools. As early as 1989, I could see that Los Angeles educational leadership was clearly a binary political system: the LAUSD Board of Education vs. UTLA.
LAUSD is simply too big to be sensitive to the needs of all children and teachers. Education is not scalable. Purchasing might be, but the day-to-day decisions needed to nurture teaching and learning is not. The further decision makers are from children and teachers, the less effective their decisions tend to be.
UTLA does not, in the end, represent teachers. UTLA represents its leadership and provides a political adversary for LAUSD. Until LAUSD and UTLA become true partners, children and teachers will continue to be fodder for the continued antagonism that supports a decaying status quo. UTLA has potential for crafting solutions to LAUSD’s challenges. I’m grateful for the current discussion of class size, and God knows we need more teaching and less testing! But UTLA insists on perceiving all charter schools as the enemy instead of looking for the opportunities they provide.
Charter schools are neither inherently good nor bad. Some are outstanding; some should be closed at once. The late American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker envisioned these experimental public schools as leading the way for school reform. It’s unfortunate that the movement has been co-opted by private industry, but the basic idea — along the lines of many magnet schools — was intended to occur in harmony with traditional public schools.
Our current UTLA leadership positions charter schools as a threat, ultimately pitting the union against the school board in a pitched political battle that’s not helping teachers or families. We need new union leadership that partners with the LAUSD board and our new superintendent to improve all schools, as all of our city’s teachers, parents and children deserve.
I have taught for LAUSD for 11 years. My wife has worked for several charters over that time period. I agree that the quality of a charter varies and is dictated by the quality of its administration and staff. However, LAUSD does not place charters under the same degree of scrutiny and oversight as its other schools. The stories of incompetence and embezzlement occurring at the LAUSD charters, that I gained firsthand from dinner table conversations, astound me. Not all charters are bad, but LAUSD’s oversight of them is lacking. Furthermore, media outlets are neglecting to report on key issues. Personally, I’d be happy with any kind of raise, but that’s not why I want to strike. I spend countless unpaid hours with my students to tutor them or run club events. The superintendent’s conditions for his “bargaining” mean that newly hired teachers will not have healthcare coverage. We spend too many hours overseeing the mental, physical, and emotional health of hundreds of students each year to allow the district to take away health benefits from future teaching professionals that deserve the same.
tl/dr public education is a waste of time, send your kid to my charter school!
I enjoy hearing many points of view regarding public education. Here is another point of view based on my experience. I am a retired LAUSD teacher. I worked for LAUSD for a little over 12 years in public schools, a charter school and a magnet. I didn’t see a great deal of difference in the schools other than that demographics seemed to play the greatest part in their performance i.e. the more affluent the school the higher the performance.
Some schools were more stressful for teachers than others. Working in the charter school was the most stressful of the schools. I was a resource teacher at the time. The school had had 7 resource teachers and 7 principals in 9 years. I lasted two years. I had to finally submit my resignation to get a transfer. The other schools were less stressful. I was lucky during my career, I only had one principal who I would consider substandard and that was because she spread discourse among the teachers. Parents were generally supportive but like the general population you would find some who were rather disturbed. The kids were the best part of the job.
So to reiterate I didn’t observe a great deal of difference in the schools other than stress levels for teachers with a very few challenging parents. The other difference being student academic performance was highly correlated with the affluence of the students. I surmise that students in affluent schools receive a great deal of motivation from their parents generally speaking. So to improve performance motivate your children, praise them for their successes and provide help where they need it. It worked for me with my son maybe it will work for you.
Great comments. This disgruntled prinipcal’s experiences in LAUSD do not conform with mine at all. And while I guess it’s not fair to disbelieve her; she states this is her experience so we should presume good faith. Still, some of this just does not ring true: being barred from seeing a public classroom? This is illegal and IME it does not happen when requested properly and respectfully and with appropriate notice.
Or this: “perhaps LAUSD should open its own charters to reduce class size”. Huh? That betrays such confusion about what is going on, what a charter is, what LAUSD is, that it is hard to believe this writer is a professional educator. It’s not hard to believe, however, she has a real chip on her shoulder about regulations and public entities vs private ones. “no government uber alles” is another tl;dr interpretation.