The Shame of Newsweek
Dear Deborah,
Did you see Newsweek last week? What a stunning and uninformed attack on teachers and teachers' unions. The cover of the magazine told the story: The Key to Saving American Education, by Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert. It was printed on a classroom blackboard. In the background, on the same blackboard, was the handwritten phrase, repeated again and again, "We must fire bad teachers."
The story itself is a parody of a right-wing rant. It seems that the nation's classrooms are overrun with "bad teachers," pedophiles, "weak" teachers, ineffective teachers, dumb teachers, and others who remain in the classroom only because they have "lifetime tenure." Evil teachers' unions protect these people who are harming our nation's children. Researchers now know, the writers say, that if we could fire all these malingerers, the notorious achievement gap between the races would soon close and America would once again lead the world in education.
The writers hold out hope: non-union charter schools and Teach for America will "save" American education.
Leave aside the odd assertion that "much of the ability to teach is innate." (How do they know?) Leave aside the adulation for Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, KIPP, and anyone who fights teachers' unions. Leave aside the horror stories about teachers accused of abusing students and keeping "a stash of pornography and cocaine at school." The article is a flamboyant example of outright hostility to teachers, to the organizations that represent them, and to public education itself.
Nowhere does the article mention that the highest-performing state in the nation is Massachusetts, where all or almost all teachers belong to unions; nor does it mention that the highest-performing nation in the world is Finland, where all or almost all teachers belong to unions. Nowhere in the article is there an example