When you deliberately confuse public school teacher "tenure" with university tenure, your credibility goes out the window.
It is laughably easy to get rid of teachers; it's just that districts don't want to pay the money for the bogus hearings which almost always favor principals.
Not to mention the book is completely bizarro:
Reviewers have criticized Mr. Brill for making what seems like a bizarre turnaround in the book's final chapter. When I asked him about it, he said the two years spent reporting had changed him.
In the book's first 420 pages, he bashes the union and its president, Randi Weingarten, is dismissive of veteran teachers and extols charters.
Three people seem to have altered that thinking. First, David Levin, a founder of the Knowledge Is Power Program, the biggest charter chain in the country, told him that charter schools would never be able to train near the number of quality teachers needed to populate all public schools.
Second, Jessica Reid, an assistant principal at Harlem Success who worked night and day to improve the lives of poor children, burned out right before Mr. Brill's eyes and quit midyear.
And third, against the odds, he came to like Ms. Weingarten. "She really cares about this stuff," he told me.
The book ultimately concludes that only the union can supply quality veteran teachers on the scale needed.
Perhaps this guy shouldn't have written about something he knows nothing about.
Get a load of this exchange:
Steven Brill_____
New York,NY
August 29th, 2011
11:15 am
I appreciate that Mr. Winerip thinks I have “seen the light” at the end of the book. What he doesn’t realize, though not for lack of my trying to explain it to him, is that I was simply reporting what I found over two years. I was not trying to render, let alone reconcile, a verdict for or against his (anti-reform) point of view.
However, despite his distinguished prior career as an reporter, I am not surprised by the apparent anger in Mr. Winerip’s opinion column, let alone his decision to distort my book by ignoring all in it that describes teachers (and even teachers’ union leaders) in a positive light and strains to explain, and depict from the classroom, how difficult efffective teaching is. When he talked with me, it was almost as if he’d been waiting to unload on me for years. He freely cast epithets, some profane, at many of the men and women portrayed in the book, and refused to consider that his reporting about alleged “skimming” of the best students at the Harlem Success charter network might be based on faulty data. (Though he did, I guess in attempt to humor me, chuckle when I tweaked him for ignoring in a prior article that I was the product of Queens, New York elementary and middle public schools, before winning a full scholarship to go to a prep school – whereupon he repeated this revelation in this article.)
After he slammed a phone down on me on Friday when I tried to get him into the weeds of that Harlem Success data, I sent Mr. Winerip an email urging him to reconsider. I never received a reply. Whether my reading of the data on Harlem Success is right or wrong (and I believe it is correct), I think his approach to dealing with the issue, let alone the near-venom of his piece today, speaks for itself.
Recommend Recommended by 5 Readers
Report as Inappropriate
Michael Winerip
Education Reporter, New York Times
August 29th, 2011
12:19 pm
I have not been waiting to unload on Mr. Brill for years; on the contrary, I have admired much of his previous work. As I told him during the reporting for my column, I was a big fan of the Teamsters book and I was also very, very impressed with "American Lawyer," a truly original creation.
In terms of my interaction with him last week: our interview was originally scheduled for 9 a.m., but he had a limited amount of time. We then agreed to talk at 6 a.m., when he had an hour; we talked again for about a half hour at 9 a.m. I have the email string; I sent him 11 and he sent me 11. In addition, I'd estimate he made several additional phone calls to me after the second interview. Eventually, I told him I had to cut short our conversation to write the piece; the very last words I said to him were: I have to go, I apologize. I did not slam the phone.
As for the substantive points in his email, he and I clearly have pretty different perspectives on school reform. Here's my take on his take on my take on his take:
First, on the data from Harlem Success:
In his book, Mr. Brill says: "Union critics of charter schools and their supporters have repeatedly asserted that schools like Harlem Success 'skim from the community's most intelligent students and committed families' or that they teach fewer learning challenged or impoverished students and fewer students who are English language learners. None of the actual data supports this."
As I indicated in my column, the city Department of Education Web site clearly has data that contradicts what he says. I sent Mr. Brill the link for verification. Here it is: http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/tools/report/default.htm#FindPR
I also told Mr. Brill that there was a recent study by the city's charter school organization that said the same thing -- that charters serve children with fewer challenges.The study says that students at charters score better but district schools have more students with special needs -- precisely what I said in the column. Mr. Brill sent me emails claiming that the city was wrong, and that he had the right information. But in his 437-page book, none of this information is included. If he had said there is disagreement on this issue, and provided the data, I would have included a reference. But in the notes in the back, he cites the same source as I did -- the city Web site.
As for Mr. Brill's statement that he was just reporting what he found, I don't understand: is his recommending Randi Weingarten for chancellor "simply reporting?" When I asked him if he meant that as some metaphor or he actually believed it, he said he was serious, and joked that some of his friends wanted to cut off his head for taking that point of view.
I stand by my characterization of his attitude toward teachers and the union: He spends most of the book detailing what's wrong with the union, and then changes this point of view at the end -- which I noted. As for his point about supporting teachers, I think what he said about "thousands" who are "skilled and motivated" supports my perspective. Thousands out of 3 million is a modest percentage.
Finally, Mr. Brill noted in the back of his book that he and his children attended private schools, so it seemed like fair game for me to as well.
In 35 years as a reporter, I have never been accused of being profane or inappropriate. Nor was I in my many conversations with Steve Brill.
Student loan default is the next big bubble about to burst.
Of course the exorbitant cost of a higher education is a deliberate attempt to restrict college access because the jobs are simply not there requiring anything much above a high school education.
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