It has! No, I haven’t been tracking it as closely as I should. But I did see today’s ruling. From the little that I’ve read I have mixed thoughts.

On the positives, it looks like the teachers union doesn’t have the grip on LA unified schools that it used to. It seems like every year now they are losing more and more schools to charter schools. Todays decision is no exception.

Also, I’m not sure whether giving the teachers control is going to do much good - it might even make the problem worse. On the one hand, you’d think teachers would have a greater incentive to improve the quality of education for students. But teachers also have a vested interest of their own - a vested interest that can run contrary to quality education.

So I don’t expect the teacher run schools to be all that much different than the status quo. But that just postpones the inevitable. Charter schools are continuing their march forward and the more they succeed the greater pressure there is on the public schools to improve (finally, competition!).