Interview by Doug Henwood

Public education is under attack across the US — and not just by right-wing Republicans. In recent decades, Democrats have also embraced the education reform agenda, including charter schools and lots of standardized testing, a pseudo-scientific way of evaluating both students and teachers.

Last spring, we saw rebellion against these strategies in conservative states like West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Now, that movement is spreading to the Democratic stronghold of California.

Despite the Democrats’ dominance in California politics, education reform has been on the march in that state for some time. A center of the fight has been Los Angeles, the second-largest school district in the country, where per-pupil spending is disastrously low. That low spending has partly been dictated by the property tax caps imposed by Proposition 13, passed forty years ago.

In the face of those funding restrictions, LA’s plutocrats have pushed the ed reform agenda hard. LA elites spent $10 million on behalf of charter school advocates in the 2017 school board elections. The pro-charter school board appointed Austin Beutner, who made a fortune in private equity and then retired to philanthropy, politics, and education reform, as superintendent of the city schools.

He and the board released a report in 2017 called “Hard Choices.” That report said the city was spending too much on teacher salaries and benefits. Among the points of comparison that led them to this conclusion were Oakland and Denver — cities that are now themselves on the verge of teacher strikes.

LA teachers were sick of it all and struck. And they won. Doug Henwood interviewed Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, and union organizer and writer Jane McAlevey to talk about the victory for Behind the News, Henwood’s show on Jacobin Radio. You can subscribe to Jacobin Radio here.