Public education is under attack across the US — and not just by right-wing Republicans. In recent decades, Democrats have also embraced the education reform agenda, including charter schools and lots of standardized testing, a pseudo-scientific way of evaluating both students and teachers.

Last spring, we saw rebellion against these strategies in conservative states like West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Now, that movement is spreading to the Democratic stronghold of California.

Despite the Democrats’ dominance in California politics, education reform has been on the march in that state for some time. A center of the fight has been Los Angeles, the second-largest school district in the country, where per-pupil spending is disastrously low. That low spending has partly been dictated by the property tax caps imposed by Proposition 13, passed forty years ago.