L.A. Teachers and Education Reform Coalition: Irreconcilable Differences?
DECEMBER 6, 2013
I QUIT. I had to.
Hopefully, you’ve never picked up the telephone and felt the hair stand up on the back of your neck as you realized who was on the phone and what they were talking about, felt your heart empty out and felt dread and despair flooding in. I have, twice. The first time, it was my ex-husband. The second time, it was the United Way of Los Angeles. I phoned into a conference call that wasn’t what I expected, and it ended my relationships with the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, Teachers for a New Unionism and Educators for Excellence, and put some others in the doghouse. The call confirmed some of the most discouraging talk I’d heard or read, and some of my most disappointing experiences. After what I heard, I couldn’t stay any longer.
We’ve had a hard time with education reform in Los Angeles, and with a broken relationship between LAUSD and UTLA; what happened this fall just made it all worse. Early in the school year, LAUSD began implementing a plan to provide iPads to every student in the district, and distributed the devices at 47 schools. Students at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights quickly figured out how to