FAIR: First, Bash the Teachers Media find a scapegoat for educational failure

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4144

By Peter Hart

Writing on the Wall Street Journal editorial page (10/1/09) under the headline “How Teachers Unions Lost the Media,” two education writers praised the press for turning on teachers, showing a “new attitude” that is in sync with today’s politics:

Editorial pages of major papers nationwide have begun to demand accountability for schools, despite objections from vested interests. Since the Obama administration took an unexpectedly tough line on school reform, the elite media response has been overwhelmingly positive.



But it’s hard to imagine that many people who follow the media would consider this much of a surprise. In fact, one of the first prerequisites for being deemed an education “reformer” by corporate media has long been an eagerness to bash teachers’ unions—and it cuts across the usual liberal/ conservative lines.
NewsWeek cover about the failure of American schools
When someone like Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (7/13/10) declares that liberals oppose school vouchers “because they are protecting the teachers’ unions,” the only surprise might be his uncharacteristic restraint. Nominally liberal pundits like Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, who wrote (2/12/07) that Democrats are “wrong to kiss up to teachers unions,” are hard to distinguish from O’Reilly on this issue.

Anti-union bias is not just found among opinion journalists. Newsweek’s cover story (3/15/10) on the failures of American teachers assembled a catalog of downbeat statistics about the state of American education and the failures of American teachers—and then observed, “At the same time, the teachers’ unions have become more and more powerful.” Newsweek writers Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert noted that teachers’ unions “are major players in the Democratic Party at the national and local levels,” and explained that “it is extremely significant—a sign of the changing times—that the Obama administration has taken them on” by promoting policies that would “weaken the grip of the teachers’ unions.” The implication, of course, is that this is a welcome development.


FULL story at link.

[RandomThoughts]

1. And they believe they know what a good and bad teacher is.

As said in many really old stories.

[femmocrat]

2. President Obama has apparently forgotten how hard teachers have worked for the democrats.

That's gratitude for you.

I won't work for him again in 2012.

[MichiganVote]

3. Teachers do not object to accountability. They object to bad accountability from the biggest racket

in this country.

Politicians.