Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is a Democrat with impeccable liberal credentials who wants to fix his city's dreadful public schools. He has one big problem: He's meeting fierce resistance from the liberal Democrats who run the teachers unions, dominate the school board and control the state legislature.
That the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country's second-largest after New York, faces a crisis is hard to dispute. Some 81% of the district's middle school kids attend failing schools, which might be one reason that one in three eventually drops out. L.A. schools superintendent (and former Democratic Colorado Governor) Roy Romer dutifully notes that elementary math and reading scores have risen in recent years. But the fact remains that only 13% of students are reading at grade level, and 11% are at grade level in math. The only word for such results is horrifying.
Among minority students in the district, who comprise the vast majority, the situation is even worse. Last year, nine out of 10 black and Latino fourth-graders scored below proficiency in reading and math. Eighth-graders fared worse. Just 8% of black eighth-graders are proficient readers, and 7% are proficient at math. For eighth-grade Latinos, the numbers are 9% and 6%, respectively.
You might think that a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city would garner plenty of establishment support for fixing a system so poorly serving members of a traditional Democratic constituency. Think again. In April, Mr. Villaraigosa announced a school reform plan that calls for "more mayoral oversight for the purpose of ensuring accountability." His proposal has met nothing but denunciation from his fellow liberals.
Currently, public education in L.A. is controlled by an elected seven-member school board, which not only appoints the superintendent but also holds sway over everything from teachers contracts and budgets to curriculum, collective bargaining and the hiring and firing of principals. Under Mr. Villaraigosa's proposal, these core duties would be turned over to the superintendent, who would answer primarily to the mayor.
This is unacceptable to the United Teachers of Los Angeles, the local union that currently controls the school board by fielding candidates and financing what are low-turnout elections. The status quo is great for union power; it just doesn't do much for kids. But then again the unions long-ago put their own clout above education quality.
L.A. isn't the only place where this sort of thing is happening. Down in Florida Governor Jeb Bush backed a law allowing children who attend schools that fail in certain evaluations to choose another school to attend, taking the tax dollars allocated for educating those children with them. Sort of a limited voucher system, if you will.
This program had astonishing results, especially among minority students, before it was shot down by lawsuits from...you guessed it...teachers unions.
Teachers unions, like all labor unions, are most interested in getting the most amount of compensation for their employees while requiring the least amount of work from them. Unfortunately for us taxpayers, that means we don't get the sort of quality education in the public school system as our money could purchase from private schools.