April 22, 2013
By Chris Reed
Los Angeles Unified is an ongoing, never-ending monument to the core premise of California education: Let’s make life easy for veteran adult employees.
Its United Teachers Los Angeles-dominated school board has for years enforced policies designed to let more experienced teachers escape the hassle of having to teach in poor neighborhoods with struggling students whose parents don’t speak English. This has led to ACLU lawsuits and some changes, but the status quo is pretty entrenched.
A new story offers a fresh example of this. Who teaches struggling English learners in many poor neighborhoods in LAUSD?
Interns.
“Los Angeles Unified School District has a very different worry about intern teachers: They come, they get trained, they move on to schools in better neighborhoods or high-paying districts, leaving students with one intern after another.
“’Those students unfortunately are experiencing a churning year after year of interns,’ Janet Davis, director of a Los Angeles Unified School District committee that provides access to professional development classes, told the Commission. ‘We had a strand of kids who actually had an entire elementary experience with only intern teachers. And those students suffered.’”
Social justice, anyone?
When will rank-and-file Democrats who believe that their party is about helping the downtrodden wise up about the CTA (UTLA is a CTA affiliate)? When will they wise up about what the California Democratic Party uses its power to achieve?
Never, evidently.
