Where Shame Is Policy: Inside LA’s ‘Teacher Jail’ by JoAnn Wypijewski

Where Shame Is Policy: Inside LA’s ‘Teacher Jail’

Using sex as an excuse, Los Angeles has created a disciplinary limbo in which hundreds of teachers languish.

JoAnn Wypijewski 
April 30, 2014   |    This article appeared in the May 19, 2014 edition of The Nation.
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Iris Stevenson hurt no child, seduced no teenager, abused no student at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles. This is what her supporters say in rallying outrage that this exemplary teacher has languished for months in the gulag of administrative detention known as “teacher jail”: she doesn’t belong there.

And she doesn’t.

Days before being removed from her music classes in December and ordered to spend her workdays isolated on a floor of the LA Unified School District (LAUSD)HQ with other suspect teachers, Stevenson, a legend in South LA and beyond, was at the White House directing the renowned Crenshaw Elite Choir as it sang for President Obama.

She has not been officially informed of the charges against her. Unofficially, Stevenson is said to have swept off the choir to perform first in Paris and then in Washington without permission—an absurd claim, since parents had to consent, and Stevenson has conducted such foundation-supported field trips untroubled for decades. District authorities say only that Stevenson is under investigation.

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