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Success of Los Angeles Teachers Strike Rocks Charter Schools, and a Rich Supporter

Students at Equitas Academy, a Los Angeles charter school. Democratic support for charters has waned as the party has shifted further to the left.Credit...Jessica Pons for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — Carrying protest signs, thousands of teachers and their allies converged last month on the shimmering contemporary art museum in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Clad in red, they denounced “billionaire privatizers” and the museum’s patron, Eli Broad. The march was a preview of the attacks the union would unleash during the teachers’ strike, which ended last week.

As one of the biggest backers of charter schools, Mr. Broad helped make them a fashionable and potent cause in Los Angeles, drawing support from business leaders like Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix; Hollywood executives; and lawmakers to create a wide network of more than 220 schools.

Mr. Broad was so bullish about the future of charter schools just a few years ago that he even floated a plan to move roughly half of Los Angeles schoolchildren — more than 250,000 students — into such schools. In 2017, he funneled millions of dollars to successfully elect candidates for the Board of Education who would back charters, an alternative to traditional public schools that are publicly funded but privately run.

His prominence has also turned him into a villain in the eyes of the teachers’ union. Now Mr. Broad and supporters like him are back on their heels in Los Angeles and across the country. The strike is the latest setback for the charter school movement, which once drew the endorsement of prominent Democrats and Republicans alike. But partly in reaction to the Trump administration, vocal Democratic support for charters has waned as the party has shifted further to the left and is more likely to deplore such schools as a drain on traditional public schools.

When the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, announced a deal between the teachers’ union and the school district after the weeklong strike, it became immediately clear that the fate of charter schools was part of the bargain: The union extracted a promise that the pro-charter school Board of Education would vote on a call for the state to cap the number of charters.

It was the latest in a string of defeats for a movement that for over a decade has pointed to Los Angeles and California as showcases for the large-scale growth of the charter school sector.

Backers of charter schools argue that they provide a much-needed choice for parents in poor neighborhoods, where low-performing schools are often the norm. Many supporters expressed frustration that student achievement had not been a focus of the debate around the Los Angeles strike. Overall, the city’s public school students tend to perform worse in reading and math than their counterparts in many other large urban school districts across the country, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The low performance of district schools, charter supporters say, has led to about a fifth of the district’s students being enrolled in charter schools.

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Bradley Greer, an art teacher, at a union rally next to The Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles in December.Credit...Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

“Why would they dive in to make this political statement?” said Myrna Castrejón, the president of the California Charter Schools Association. Addressing the teachers’ union, she said: “Do you hate us that much that you would bargain away the future of poor children and Latino children for this?”

Charter schools, which are generally not unionized, were not officially on the bargaining table in the protracted negotiations between the union and the district. It is the state, not the school district, that crafts the laws governing charter schools and their growth. But it was always a central message of the union during the strike: Charter schools, they argued, were taking students and money away from traditional public schools.

Still, charter schools have proven popular among many parents in Los Angeles. Some schools have long waiting lists and the district already has more students enrolled in charters than any other public school system in the country.

It is still unclear how much practical impact the deal will have on charters. Charter school supporters are lobbying the school board, which has steadfastly supported charters for more than a decade, to vote down the resolution for a charter school cap this week. Even if it passes, advocates are certain to take the fight to Sacramento, where a bill calling for a moratorium seems likely. They will argue that charters have given poor students and students of color essential options for better schools.

But the defeat in the court of public opinion is clear: After years of support from powerful local and national allies — including many Democrats — charter schools are now facing a backlash and severe skepticism.

Over the past two years, charter school supporters were dealt painful political defeats in California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and other states.

As the push for alternatives to traditional public schools has come to be more associated with President Trump and his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, the shift in Democratic Party politics has been especially pronounced. President Barack Obama supported expanding high-quality charter schools, and pushed teachers’ unions to let go of some of their traditional seniority protections and put more emphasis on raising student achievement.

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First-grade students at Equitas Academy.Credit...Jessica Pons for The New York Times

But after a wave of mass teacher walkouts across the nation, and with a noticeable shift to the left in the party, ambitious national Democrats now seem more hesitant to criticize organized labor. Senators Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were among those who said they supported the striking teachers in Los Angeles. The city’s charter school leaders couldn’t help but notice that no equally prominent elected Democrat rose to the defense of Los Angeles charter schools as union leaders attacked them.

“The brand of charter schools is damaged right now,” said Ben Austin, a Democrat who helped craft a law that allows parents to turn traditional schools into charter schools. “It’s not a coincidence, it’s because the teachers’ union has done an effective job of demonizing them.”

One of the union’s more potent criticisms of charter schools is that they are supported by billionaire corporate philanthropists, who are often from outside the communities in which the schools exist. Supporters of the Los Angeles charter school sector have included donors such as Mr. Broad and Mr. Hastings; Michael R. Bloomberg; Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs; Donald Fisher, founder of the Gap; and members of the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune.

That assessment was evident on the picket lines all over Los Angeles during the strike, with signs railing against “privatizers” and the “greedy side” of the philanthropists. Most of the donors, particularly those with ties to the Democratic Party, declined or did not respond to interview requests. Aides to Mr. Broad said he was not available for comment.

During the strike, Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of the union, said that the criticism had “clearly touched a nerve” among the public.

“The reason it’s touched a nerve is because our neighborhood public schools have been neglected,” he said. “Rather than fund them at an appropriate level, the agenda is to try and privatize them and turn more and more over to privately run charters.”

But supporters of charter schools dismiss that notion, pointing out that the district has many financial problems.

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Demonstrators gathered during the Los Angeles strike. One of the union’s more potent criticisms of charter schools is that they are supported by billionaire corporate philanthropists.Credit...Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

“I am supremely disappointed and almost angered at some of the funders of the charter movement, who have put hundreds of millions into charters and have not taken the time to explain what they are doing to the public,” said William Bloomfield, a donor who said he gave more than $8 million last year to EdVoice, a political action fund run by charter school advocates.

“For people to reach the most ridiculous conclusion that this is about profits is absurd,” he said. “This is about giving every kid a chance for a world-class education.”

But many see the competition for students as a downside of charter schools. Critics have said the district should study the impact on existing schools before allowing new charters to open.

“Competition can be healthy, but hyper competition can be very damaging,” said David Rattray, executive vice president of the Center for Education Excellence and Talent Development for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve turned education into a commodity — if that kid walks across the street, you’re chasing after him for the money attached to his seat. That’s ridiculous if you think about the long term. Nobody meant to do that.”

A 2014 Stanford study that compared traditional and charter schools in Los Angeles found that 48 percent of charters outperformed traditional schools in reading and 44 percent of charters outperformed traditional schools in math; the rest of the charter schools were either similar to public schools or lower performing. On the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, eighth graders in the city’s charter schools scored better in reading and math than their peers in traditional schools.

Shavar Jeffries, the president of Democrats for Education Reform, a national organization that supports alternatives to traditional public schools, said there were still prominent Democrats, like Senator Booker, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, whom he considered strong supporters of the charter school sector. And at the local level, he said, many Democratic mayors and state legislators continued to support charter schools, especially those offering additional options for low-income black and Latino students, like those in Los Angeles.

“Charters exist because the parents demand them and want them,” Mr. Jeffries said. “I do wish more leaders would step up and stand up and deliver that message.”

Ana Ponce began teaching in a Los Angeles charter school more than three decades ago, drawn by an idealistic desire to improve schools for Latino students who, like her, had come to the United States knowing little English. Now, Ms. Ponce is the chief executive of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, a network of charter schools. She will soon take over Great Public Schools Now, an organization created by Mr. Broad to help charter schools in Los Angeles.

“We all want good schools,” Ms. Ponce said. “We’re all public schools. People like me are starting charter schools and people like me believe in these schools.”

Jennifer Medina reported from Los Angeles and Dana Goldstein from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Strike Throws Cold Water on a City’s Embrace of Charter Schools. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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