The Education Wars: L.A. Charter Schools

Teachers won a victory there in school reform elections, but the results may not amount to a whole lot:

Teachers won a nearly clean sweep over charter schools and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in elections for school-reform plans that were held last week. The Los Angeles Unified School District released the election results Tuesday, packaging them with separate professional evaluations of each reform plan that sometimes resulted in a different verdict.

Neither the election results nor the evaluations are the final word on who will run 12 persistently low-performing schools and 18 new campuses under a school-reform strategy adopted in August. L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines will issue his own recommendations, and the school board is scheduled to make a final decision Feb. 23.

The main competitors for the campuses have been groups of teachers -- frequently allied with district administrators -- and charter schools. Charters are independently run public schools that are free from some restrictions that govern traditional schools, including district labor contracts. Teachers, in effect, were fighting to maintain more than 1,000 union jobs as well as for a chance at real local control over school sites. With support from United Teachers Los Angeles, the district’s teachers union, teachers launched vigorous grassroots campaigns for their homegrown reform proposals.

Charter operators decried misleading claims by some teachers and alleged voter intimidation as well as inconsistent or unfair voting practices. The League of Women Voters of Los Angeles conducted the election.