The Nation: Biased Slant Misses Point On Education
Steven Brill, the journalist and media entrepreneur, has come a long way since he helicoptered onto the education beat in 2009.
That's when The New Yorker published Brill's expose of the New York City "rubber rooms," where the Department of Education parked the one-twentieth of 1 percent of the city's 80,000 public school teachers — about forty people — who had been accused of gross negligence and removed from the classroom. As they awaited the due process hearings guaranteed in their union contracts, rubber room teachers received full pay and benefits, sometimes for up to three years.
The article sparked outrage among readers, who were appalled that millions of tax dollars were spent annually paying the salaries and arbitrating the cases of teachers who came to work inebriated or practiced corporal punishment. Despite the fact that the Department of Education
