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Villaraigosa and the LA Times: parting of the ways

The colorful minds behind School Me! are still off vacationing, so we haven’t heard a lot of commentary from them yet on the progress of the takeover plan.  But one thing is clear: Villaraigosa has lost the LA Times editorial board on the idea.

United Teachers Los Angeles opposes merit pay for top-performing teachers. It makes the firing of bad teachers almost impossible. It’s against allowing administrators to assign teachers to the schools where they are needed most. It’s sharply critical of charter schools. The union doesn’t like having a unified curriculum, and it thinks that teachers shouldn’t have to put up with training from coaches.

In other words, the union is largely opposed to most reforms that demand more of teachers. (Individual teachers, many of whom applaud changing the schools to benefit students, are another matter.)

One of the biggest criticisms of the school board has been that the union wields too much power over its decisions because the union is by far the biggest donor to board candidates. Mayoral control of schools, in theory at least, dilutes that power because mayoral candidates draw from a larger pool of donors, and a mayor’s decisions receive more public scrutiny.

So much for theory. As it turns out, a mayor eager to work out a legislative compromise — and who has a long history with the teachers union — can hand far more to the union than the school board has ever agreed to.

And here’s the stinger:

A weakened school board, as beholden to UTLA as ever, makes an ideal negotiating partner for a powerful union. A superintendent who isn’t answerable to the board gives the union enough wiggle room to continually challenge district policy. A situation in which no one is dominant provides a perfect opportunity for the strongest player to emerge as the leader of the district. And UTLA is a strong, well-financed player. No wonder (UTLA president A.J.) Duffy likes this deal so much.

Go read the whole thing.   

UPDATE: The editorial didn’t tell the whole story on just what Duffy said at yesterday’s hearing.  Mike Antonucci fills in the blanks: 

In testimony before the California Senate Education Committee, Duffy defended the deal between UTLA and Mayor Villaraigosa by saying:

"This bill has been criticized for fragmenting authority over the system so that no one person is accountable, but that is precisely the genius of this legislation."

Duffy is absolutely right. It takes sheer genius to craft a proposal so cleverly that an operation involving tens of thousands of employees, hundreds of thousands of students, and billions of dollars holds no one accountable.

Bravo, sir.

Who would have thought Duffy would be so forthright about it?