First, Bash the Teachers

[proud2BlibKansan]

Media find a scapegoat for educational failure

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.

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.

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

[stray cat]

1. and they bash the students and parents and administrators and no one learns anything

hire well educated immigrants

[End Of The Road]

2. No evidence required

This is the important part of the article:


"What goes mostly if not entirely unexplained amid these anti-teacher assaults is any coherent explanation of what it is that teachers unions have done or failed to do to promote excellence in schools. A survey by Robert M. Carini of Indiana University (School Reform Proposals: The Research Evidence, 2002) of the available research comparing achievement in unionized versus non-unionized schools found that “teacher unionism favorably influences achievement for most students.”

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Amen

It's like a surreal nightmare. Ignore what the research really shows and pretend the unions are the problem because well, because because we just KNOW that the unions are the problem.

[EFerrari]

4. Shhhhhhh!

[YvonneCa]

5. This story needs to get out there...

...to the public.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Yes it does!

[TexasObserver]

6. recommend

Teachers can only work with the students the parents send them and the assets the district provides them.

[laughingliberal]

8. K & R nt

[Starry Messenger]

9. k & r