Kaus is once again demonstrating his profound ignorance when it comes to public education in general and LAUSD in particular.

LAUSD (LA Unified School District) has more than one Charter School program. But a Charter school doesn't mean that the staff isn't unionized. LAUSD Charters use unionized teaching staff.

But that's not a problem. Why? Because while it is true that there are "must hires" in LAUSD based on seniority, it is also true that principals are fairly clever in getting around these must hires and even bringing in newer and more junior blood. One way a principal can do this is to reallocate the staff duties so that one teacher is required to be certificated in multiple subjects in a manner that the known problem "must hire" cannot meet.

For example, the opening is for a Am History teacher and the Must Hire is certificated in Am History. What the principle does is to combine in another full time slot and split the job into two jobs that EACH are 50% Am History and 50% Social Studies (which is a different certificate). Then hire in either one new teacher that can fill both, or two 50% teachers that can handle Am history and SS. And since the "must hire" is looking for a full time slot, odds are they will pass it up. And a "must hire" that cannot find a gig, gets laid off, even though they may have more seniority.

The other issue which Kaus misses is that even though LAUSD is laying off teachers, this really is simply a hiring freeze. The attrition rate of new teachers is so high that simply by not filling the positions left open by teachers quitting it fulfills the layoff.

Why do teachers quit? Lousy salary, huge class sizes, worse working conditions and people like Kaus who bloviate about teachers being incompetent when they don't know anything about public education in the USA

The Unions haven't lost the MSM, I am not sure that they ever really had it. The problem is the grown number of people who buy into the republican goal of destroying public education. An ignorant populace is an easily controlled populace. Just the kind republicans like.

The mainstream media is doing its job. They hold the feet of power to the fire. And unions do have power, so MSM investigates them.

The MSM barely singes the toenails of what is becoming an odious entity unto itself.

The economies of scale argument has produced mega-schools which are much less concerned with individual education than they are with large scale behavior management/warehousing. Inner city schools have become the sanctuaries of the less competent, but politicially obedient school administrators who have taken cues from the private counterparts on how to maintain their jobs even at the cost of the overall educational mission.

I grew up attending school in rural Iowa. In Kindergarten and second grade, my classrooms were in the iconic "one-room schoolhouse," the former surviving even now as a museum. Even as a teacher, few of us knew whether the Iowa State Board of Education did anything more than rubber-stamp teaching certificates. Education was a strictly local endeavor; sports and academic contests were both well-attended with parents holding considerable sway (not always positively, but ubiquitously) in monitoring the behavior of the staff sponsors. Censorship of student publications was rare and indeed, in Tinker v. Des Moines, the rights of students to non-violent protests was upheld.

This intellectual freedom has a long tradition in that state despite many conservative demographics. Iowa admitted women to college in 1848, had the most successful high school girls' basketball (6-on-6) tournament in the nation, launched the nomination of a black man to the Presidency, and recently allowed gays to wed. Neither party has ever had Iowa firmly in its pocket.

Teacher Unions exist in Iowa public schools, but mostly for the other benefits involved. A sudden swelling in the ranks of a teachers' union is as much a signal that something is rotten administratively as anything else. Iowa school boards with their practical-thinking, though surprisingly well-educated farmers serve as a check to administrative excess.

Iowa school boards with their practical-thinking, though surprisingly well-educated farmers serve as a check to administrative excess

Or it could be that the education level no longer is keeping up with the issues in play.

In some cases, I might agree, but if the Iowa caucus system demonstrates anything about Iowa, it's how uniformly the public will participate in a process that is open and honest. Iowans were not cowed by Hillary (The Des Moines Register labeled her candidacy "Imperial", the kiss of death in a state which prides itself on its egalitarianism).

Considering I left Iowa to teach elsewhere is as much a reflection on the state of the state's educational system as anything. For every job opening I applied for, at least a couple of doaen (sometimes as many as a hundred) applications were received. When I went to Houston, I was hired ten minutes after the beginning of my first interview.

I also understand that one of the advanatages Iowa education has always enjoyed is the ennui-induced desire for education; it beats slopping the pigs. Alas, technology is reducing the social/entertainment gap, and soon the nonreadership levels in the rural areas will match that of the 24-hour excitement big cities. The Internet has also enabled farmkids to concoct their own forms of methamphetamine, thereby advancing that stupidity to the rural areas as well, most of which were untouched by crack and heroin (though we'd always had that Wildwood Weed).