Maybe I’m just too close to see it clearly, but to my eyes the LA teachers’ strike is pushing last year’s teacher walkouts in new directions, directions that will shape our conversations about public education for years to come. Here are a few of the most compelling commentaries to come out so far:

• An historian looks at the deeper problem, at WaPo.

When we lambaste the charter schools that urban parents may choose as undermining public education, but say nothing of the urban private schools and exclusive suburban public schools that enable affluent parents to exit struggling districts, we not only apply a dangerous double-standard, but we also place the blame for low-performing schools on those who must attend them.

• What do the striking teachers say?
• Peter Greene on the new meaning of teachers walkouts, at Forbes:

these modern walkouts are about the very idea that public schools should be kept healthy at all.

• Follow the $$$$, at T74.
• One conservative teacher complains about union leftism, at OCR.

What inspires well-paid teachers to deny the needs of kids they love in exchange for angry strikes they loathe? Union deception and brutality.

• Strikers and race, at The Atlantic.

Numerous Latino teachers repeatedly told me that a sense of solidarity with their students is what’s driving them to the picket lines—a profoundly personal connection to those children, and a fear that current school conditions are not serving them.

• Is this strike the tipping point for progressive school politics? At TP.
• Wait…where is the conservative outrage? We ask here at ILYBYGTH.
  • Is this it? “Fire them all!” from Curmudgucation.

My advice to the district: Hold strong. Replace them all. If they want a dramatic impact on education, fire the union and begin to repair the schools, just like Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.