Mar 15, 2007 2:24 PM
Correcting the New York Post’s editorial writers could be a full-time job — which we will eschew. But this stridently reactionary, anti-union, anti-public education newspaper does have a large circulation and its recent bout of editorial apoplexy over the mass rally urging the mayor and schools chancellor to put the public back into public education deserves some straightening out.
In back-to-back editorials over two days on Feb. 28 and March 1, the Post called the huge rally at St. Vartan’s Cathedral last month “Randi’s Rent-a-Rally” and accused the state legislators who support a greater voice for the public of being “the UFT’s Albany Puppets.”
First, and most important, it should be noted that despite the Post’s fulminating, all one needs to do is go to almost any public school in the city and get an earful from parents and educators who are upset about the direction of the schools and being shut out of all decision-making for the schools. Even so distinguished a long-time researcher and observer of the education scene as Diane Ravitch complains that all decisions are made behind “closed doors … with no public discussion or public review.” Ravitch doesn’t ordinarily attend rallies like the one at St. Vartan’s but she was impelled to do so by the deteriorating situation in the city’s school system [see her comments on the page opposite].
Other city papers, none of them especially friendly to the UFT, have reported that far from being the UFT’s hired help, parents are increasingly incensed by the lack of response from Tweed. The Staten Island Advance, for example, reported on March 8 that the chancellor’s reception at a public forum the night before was so stormy that he “didn’t bother to finish his last point” but “bolted for a side exit.” In the audience, the Advance reported, “Many parents and teachers came to the meeting angry and left angrier.”
Things have gotten to the point, according to a Daily News article on March 9, that a New York State Board of Regents member has called on parent leaders in the city to “tone down” the rhetoric about the Department of Education. But, according to the News, Tim Johnson, who chairs the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, “said parents won’t back down until the administration responds to their concerns.”
In his March 2 column on education matters in The Sun, Andrew Wolf says “the concern of parents throughout the city is real. It emanates from the mistakes made by a top-down structure that has systematically excluded New York’s greatest strength, our communities.”
Wolf then gives the details about “scores of angry parents” in the South Bronx, parents in Forest Hills who are “upset,” parents in Riverdale who are “livid,” parents in Throggs Neck who are “shocked” and others equally dismayed over the policies and practices of the DOE. “There is plenty of grassroots outrage over the direction of the schools,” Wolf concludes.
But the blindered editorial writers at the Post can’t see past their party line. They make not a single mention of upset parents. They refer to members of the public at the St. Vartan’s rally as “a bought-and-paid-for chorus of false reformers.” Public officials in Albany who held hearings on mayoral control of public education are “shills” of the UFT. The Working Families Party, which sponsored the St. Vartan’s rally and ACORN, a community group that participated, are “on the UFT dole.” Public officials like City Comptroller William Thompson, City Council members Letitia James, David Weprin, Bill de Blasio, Vincent Gentile and Eric Gioia were there because “the union has given handsomely” to them.
The Post’s editorialists apparently cannot conceive of anyone honestly disagreeing with them. Everyone is only acting on ulterior motives and self-interest. UFT President Randi Weingarten, they say, doesn’t “give a damn about New York’s schoolchildren.”
We don’t need to defend Weingarten or the others from the likes of the Post — in fact, being attacked by the Post these days is something of a badge of honor. And certainly, the Post, for whatever misguided reasons, is entitled to express its opinion about the state of the city’s school system, even if it is at odds with nearly everyone else. But the recent editorial bullying is playground stuff. It just shows how wrong and how empty the Post’s arguments are.