Kirti Baranwal and Gillian Russom are teachers in Los Angeles. Today the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed they wrote: ?Education Reform the Union Way.?
At our schools, we are seeing excellent examples of grass-roots school reform. While politicians cut our funding, lay off our colleagues, raise class sizes, threaten our schools with outside takeovers and then blame everything on our union, teachers are continuing the difficult day-to-day work of transforming public education ? with UTLA's full support.
This may be true; teachers in L.A. may be doing ?difficult day-to-day work??that may be??transforming? their schools. But Baranwal and Russom's list of such transformational actions is rather uninspiring. For instance, is ?design[ing] an exhibition night when students present projects addressing real-world problems to parents and community members,? or ?organizing an internship fair,? really transformational? The authors also write that ?the mayor's criticism of our union comes as UTLA has been advancing several broader reform initiatives.??Such as??Well, the initiatives??include proposals for creating more stability at our hardest-to-staff schools, a new, detailed plan for authentic teacher evaluations that focuses on improving instruction, and support for new forms of school governance.? And:
When UTLA resumes contract negotiations with the district this month, we will bring with us bargaining initiatives for authentic school change, a new teacher evaluation and support program, increased teacher autonomy and an end to class-size increases. These are the bargaining priorities that UTLA members favored in a recent survey.
This rather vapid stuff may be ?Education Reform the Union Way.? But it just doesn't seem like education reform in any real way.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow