Deal is a Lesson in Education Politics

Bob Sipchen:

Six weeks ago, Deshawn Hill and I walked into Pacific Dining Car and caught a glimpse of democracy in action: A.J. Duffy and Robin Kramer having a late evening chat.

Duffy's the charmingly cocky boss of Southern California's biggest teachers union. Kramer is the mayor's charmingly clever chief of staff. I'll remind you who Hill is later. For now, let's stick to the boss and the chief.

Kramer tells me the meeting was a coincidental bump-into-each-other thing. But seeing those two together at the city's power-broker steak palace resonated with a hunch I'd been harboring: All those months of teachers union squawking about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plans to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District were mainly for show.

Because he's a teacher, though, his motives conflict.

Like you, I think good teachers are heroes who deserve more money and respect and smaller classes and more control over what they teach. I understand why many people have a hard time accepting that their kids' teachers' interests don't always overlap with students' interests. In protecting a teacher's interests, a union often adds to the bureaucratic bloat.

Since I began reporting this column in January (and in the 17 years I've followed my children through L.A. Unified schools) the most righteously frustrated people I've met have tended to lash out at two villains: the district bureaucracy and the union to whom so many board members and bureaucrats are beholden.

Even many teachers say privately that they're disgusted that unions erect barricades against merit pay, charter schools and administrators' ability to move experienced teachers to the schools at which they're most needed. Hear enough stories about just how hard it is to fire an utterly incompetent teacher, and you begin to wonder why the public tolerates unelected union power brokers in their children's lives at all.

Mike Antonucci has much more, including notes from Racine here.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 5, 2006 3:43 PM
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