Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.

The LA Times editorial page has established its independence on education issues several times in recent months — through its candidate endorsements and its views on charter school accountability, teacher evaluations, the parent trigger, and teacher dismissal proposals (among several examples).

So it’s all the more striking that editorial page writer Karin Klein took to the newspaper’s pages yesterday to denounce the fiery anti-reform rhetoric at last weekend’s California Democratic Convention:

“Real Democrats clearly aren’t allowed to disagree with the California Teachers Assn,” wrote Klein, who pens many of the editorial page’s education opinions.

“[But] how well were disadvantaged students doing before reform? What was the CTA doing for them? Yes, it lobbied for more money, and schools do need more money; unfortunately, it didn’t lobby for that money to be spent in effective ways that would have to prove their educational worth.”