John Thompson on Brill's Re-write of Teacher Union History
Guest post by John Thompson.
It is a truism that when an attorney does not have the evidence, he or she argues the law. When lawyers do not have the facts or the law on their side, they tell a good story. Steve Brill's new book, Class Warfare, exemplifies that principle when indicting teachers and unions.
According to Brill's brief, teachers unions have a long history of outsmarting school systems. So, New York City Chancellor Joel Klein persuaded the union to streamline the dismissal process. Then, Klein and a Wall Street lawyer, Daniel Weisberg, recruited a "squad of lawyers to help principals paper their files." It should only take a "preponderance of evidence" to terminate a teacher, but the union lawyers still continued to defeat Klein's and Weisberg's elite team. Rather than evaluate the evidence that arbitrators found persuasive, Brill just cites Klein's