Breaking Up (With Ed Reform) Is Hard To Do
Lisa Alva is a dangerous woman. At least some people think so: last month, she published a blistering piece on the InterACT education website recounting her “broken romance” with some of the leading organizations in education reform. Lisa had already butted heads with some union leaders by speaking out publicly against their seniority policies and resistance to accountability. But her association with the reform movementended abruptly this past December:
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 Educators4Excellence, and put some others in the doghouse…
Listening in to a conference call with the United Way that was supposed to be a talk with education groups but turned into a recruiting session to rally support for LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, Lisa “felt the hair stand up on the back of [her] neck” as she realized that the groups were brainstorming to throw their support to a superintendent believed by some to be anti-union and currently very unpopular due to his recent expenditure of a billion dollars to purchase iPads for LAUSD students.
To Lisa, who had believed these groups to be above politics, it felt like a personal betrayal. For her, groups representing private or charter interests had no business throwing their