It’s about the students

November 2009: It’s no secret that UTLA was against the Public School Choice motion from the get go. It’s unconscionable that the majority of the School Board—who were elected to help our schools— wants to simply hand them over to outside interests.

Few things in the history of LAUSD have the potential to change public education more than this motion and how we respond to the challenges it presents. We will fight for each and every school, and no site stands alone. We’re fighting for our core principles—that public education means neighborhood schools, with doors open to all, where teachers and parents have a stronger voice in what goes on. We’re fighting for our students, who deserve school change plans developed by the people who know them best. We’re fighting for our profession, where teachers are treated like professionals and not temporary employees who cycle through a revolving door, spending four or so years in a charter before moving on to another career.

Now that the deadline for letters of intent has passed, we can see who we are dealing with. Every one of the 36 schools opened up for proposals this year as part of the Public School Choice motion has been bid for by an outside group. Some of the groups trying to take over schools are coming from hundreds of miles away. What does a group like Synesi—based in Wilmette, Illinois—know about our L.A. kids? I think our parents will ask the same question.

In the coming weeks, we will be reaching out to parents and the community like never before. Time and again it is proven—when we talk to parents one on one about our vision for our students and the truth about charters, we win them over. When we work with parents on what they want to see at our schools, we strengthen our plans for change.

Far too often, UTLA’s stance against outside operators is painted in a negative light—that our members don’t want our schools taken over simply because we don’t want to lose union members or weaken our contract.
That conveniently ignores what we all know to be true: Day after day, teachers and health and human services professionals put students first. It’s in our DNA. It’s why we work long hours for low pay. It’s why we stay up until midnight working on a new lesson plan after a TV show sparked an idea for teaching fractions. It’s why we spend that Target gift card on school supplies instead of a needed microwave.

If our members truly believed that handing schools over to outside operators who don’t know our kids was the first ones on that path.

But that’s the great divide between education professionals who work in our schools every day and politicians and other noneducation outsiders who all-too-readily embrace anything that remotely resembles an easy fix for the tough problems of public education.

Everyone, from President Obama to Education Secretary Arne Duncan to LAUSD senior staff on down, has the same mantra: Student achievement must be data driven. School change must be data driven. Every educational decision we make must be data driven. Yet, when it comes to their tireless support for charter schools, I have to ask: Are they reading the data?

From the Rand reports in 2003 and 2006 to the recent Stanford analysis in June, the studies say the same thing: Charters do not outperform public schools and, in many cases, do worse.

The study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes was one of the most comprehensive of all because it looked at more than 70 percent of the nation’s charter school students, providing one of the first “group portraits” of their academic performance. You may have read about the numbers in the UNITED TEACHER already: The study found 17 percent of charter students outperformed traditional schools, 46 percent have results no different from local public school options, and over a third—37 percent— deliver learning results significantly worse than would have been realized in traditional public schools.

In New York City, where charters are also blindly supported by the education higher-ups, a recent eye-opening report shows that charter schools have done worse than traditional public schools according to their education department’s own measurements. The report also acknowledges that traditional public schools enroll almost four times as many English language learners and about 70 percent more special education students.

I fear that untangling the hidden agendas behind those who support charters—in the face of research that says they’re no better—must unfortunately come down to money. Why are School Board members who were elected to run our schools so eager to give them away?

Just because I’m pushing for the truth to come out about the data on charters, that doesn’t mean we are against charter school teachers. Far from it—they are our brothers and sisters in education. We also recognize that some charter schools are quite good.

What we are against are charter operators who do not provide equal access to all students and force out students who do not perform well or who have discipline issues. We are against charter operators who are not accountable for student learning. We are against charter operators who, because their teachers don’t have a decent contract, create high teacher turnover rates and threaten to deprofessionalize our profession. We are against charter operators whose schools are controlled by private boards where parents and teachers have little or no voice.

So much is at stake in the coming months. Find your reason to fight and stand with all of us.