If you knew teachers in a charter school who wanted to organize, would you recommend they call Randi Weingarten or Leo Casey?

I get people who ask me why so much non NYC stuff on this blog from places like LA and Chicago?

They are missing the essential national and international attack on teachers and their unions if they focus on the minutia of what goes on in NYC. See, the big picture gives the resistance a better ability to fight back. The UFT is actively working with many of these forces. Their basic strategy is to delay, followed by the avowed goal to organize charter schools, which actually puts them in the position of allowing the destruction of the public school system (and the union) in urban areas and then reorganizing almost from ground zero. Shades of the 50's and 60's. And they've done such a good job in the south.

If you knew teachers in a charter school who wanted to organize, would you recommend they call Randi Weingarten or Leo Casey? Hello, anyone home at the UPS union?

Charter attack in LA
I have some of these links on the sidebar I picked up from Perimeter Primate, but in case you missed them:

Diane Ravitch on charters in the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ravitch11-2009aug11,0,4585380.story

And another fine piece from last week along similar lines:

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_12985055?source=rss

And here's the June Graduation section from the Time's "journal"-type series about Green Dot's takeover of Locke HS in LAUSD.

Clearly, throughout the series, the writer is spinning for Locke the whole time, but has enough honesty (or carelessness) in this section to let some tellingly truthful details of actual student behavior slip out:

http://www.latimes.com/la-ed-locke25-2009jun25-test,0,2545367.story


Lackluster test results for Mayor Villaraigosa's high-profile schools and Locke High
The two highest-profile school-reform efforts in Los Angeles — the mayor’s schools and the conversion of Locke High into six charter schools — achieved lackluster results in state test scores released this morning.

The picture was mixed for 10 schools overseen by appointees of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. At one school, Markham Middle School in Watts, test scores declined slightly. On the brighter side, test scores bumped up strongly at 99th Street Elementary.

Overall, scores at these schools rose, but so did scores at most other district schools, and the mayor’s schools did not ostensibly separate themselves from the pack.