It is truly painful to read stories like this one from the LA Times, which details how California’s education establishment has successfully fended off competition from charter schools. In this case, the losers are kids with special needs. As the story points out, the irony is that Big Education’s frequent argument is that charters don’t serve enough kids with special needs.

Newsflash: the education system’s problem with charters has nothing to do with children. Their fight against charters is about maintaining power and control.

In the end, the board turned down all but four charter bids, opting instead primarily for internal, teacher-led proposals. Even though the district has struggled most with improving secondary education, no charter received a high school and only one, Magnolia Science Academy, will run a middle school — on a campus it will share with a separate teacher-run school.

The teachers union fought hard to limit the charters. Every new charter would have effectively reduced the union’s membership — potentially corresponding to more L.A. Unified layoffs during the current district budget crisis. And a growing nonunion charter workforce gradually reduces union clout not only on pay and benefits issues, but also on matters such as class size and the direction of future reforms.

The union’s pressure on board members got a boost from Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the L.A. County Federation of Labor and who personally called on board members the day before the vote.

Here in North Carolina, the fear of competition from charter schools is equally clear. JLF’s Terry Stoops explains our state’s glaring double standard of accountability for public charter schools and traditional public schools. What would happen if the tougher charter standards were applied to all the schools? More than 150 would be closed.