President's Perspective
20/20 with blinders on
Mar 2, 2006 12:09 PM
“20/20’s” broadside against public education, “Stupid in America,” which aired last month, should have come as no surprise. It was produced and hosted by John Stossel, whose long record of unbalanced and inaccurate reporting to advance his right-wing views is well known among media watchers.
National organizations that monitor news outlets, like FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) and MediaMatters, have frequently criticized Stossel’s reports for blatant violations of even minimal standards of fair and ethical journalism. For more than a decade, Stossel’s so-called “news” commentary has been cited for factual errors, misleading editing, selective interviewing, quoting out of context and ignoring evidence that refutes his opinions.
The Jan. 13 edition of the ABC-TV program was no exception. It was an hour-long saga of good (vouchers, choice, competition) vs. evil (public schools, government monopolies), in which the greatest villain of all is — you guessed it — teacher unions and the educators we represent!
Certainly the problems of public education deserve some thoughtful, fact-based examination, and an hour on prime-time TV doing that would have been a welcome contribution. But the ABC network, in allowing Stossel to promote his opinions as objective analysis, was just as irresponsible as Stossel himself.
That’s why the delegates unamimously authorized a petition now circulating in the schools that protests the broadcast, demands an apology, and urges the Disney-owned network to “enforce standards of journalism that ensure fair and accurate coverage of education issues.” These petitions are available through your chapter leader and on our Web site at uft.org. Just click on the Action Center. We will present them at a rally at ABC headquarters in Manhattan on March 8 on Columbus Avenue, between 66th and 67th Streets, at 4:30 p.m. That rally will be part of a simultaneous coast-to-coast protest, in which members of other AFT locals in Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, Providence, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Gary, Ind., and other locales will also be demonstrating at the offices of ABC affiliates.
Now, let’s be clear. Investigative journalism that seeks to expose wrongdoing has a proud tradition, and labor owes a great deal to those great muckraking journalists of the past like Upton Sinclair and Jacob Riis whose graphic descriptions of inhuman living and working conditions sparked major social reforms. Even our own New York Teacher reporters have exposed “Principals from Hell” and helped to focus the spotlight on the now-retired Brooklyn Tech principal, Lee McCaskill.
But these journalists respected the facts, and they followed the evidence wherever it led them. They did not first determine their version of the “truth” and then find (or fabricate) the “facts” to support their point of view. The AFT, in its point-by-point analysis of “Stupid in America” (available at Stossel Watch in the Action Center on the UFT Web site), quotes Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan on this point: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
Let me give you some examples that are close to home:
Example 1: Quoting Chancellor Klein, Stossel says on the show, “it’s just about impossible” to fire a bad teacher. After narrating a long story — dating from years ago — about a teacher who allegedly sent sexual e-mails to a student, he briefly concedes that “the new contract will make it easier to get rid of sex offenders,” but quickly adds that “it will still be difficult to fire incompetent teachers.”
So the story is just to mislead the audience! But let’s deal with the underlying question: Does the union protect incompetence?
Clearly, the UFT’s job is to protect educators from arbitrary, capricious or unfair charges. Judging competence requires supervisors who know what they are doing. Unfortunately, many complain or pass the buck, but few actually do the job of properly evaluating teachers.
Still, no one wants an incompetent teacher in a school, least of all that teacher’s colleagues. That’s why, in 2004, I first proposed that if management found it so difficult, the union would take responsibility for policing our profession, much as the medical and bar associations do. Building on our highly successful Peer Intervention Program, we would work with struggling teachers to either improve their skills, or failing that, counsel them out of the profession.
I told Stossel and his producers several times about our plan. But when the segment aired, the proposal was on the cutting room floor. All the viewer saw was Stossel’s mocking retort.
Example 2: Stossel sneers at our contract demand, presented during the fact-finding, for a “uniform six-hour-and-40-minute day,” remarking that he’d love to work such a short time. That’s ironic, since to see it from the outside, Stossel’s only work-time obligation is 60 minutes a week. Just as the time he spends preparing for that program doesn’t show, neither does the time teachers spend beyond the regular school day preparing lessons, materials and assessments; reading and grading papers and tests; completing required reports … etc., etc., etc. In fact, with the largest classes and toughest working conditions in the area, New York City teachers are the hardest-working people I know.
Frank McCourt (who will be our Dewey Award winner this year) describes the all-consuming nature of teaching in his new book, “Teacher Man.” When asked why he didn’t begin his writing career until age 66, after 30 years of teaching in New York City’s high schools, he explains that he was busy teaching, “After a day [of teaching] … your head is filled with the clamor of the classroom… [Y]ou’re not inclined to go home to clear your head and fashion deathless prose.”
And as for uniform workdays and weeks, they are a given in the private sector. Teachers, like so many others, have after-work responsibilities like child care and coursework, and an irregular schedule is a major inconvenience. That’s why we pushed for spreading the extra time equally throughout the day.
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Beyond attacking us, Stossel makes broader claims about public education that research has proven are unfounded. But that doesn’t stop him. Among them are such canards as “there is no link between spending and student achievement,” competition improves education, charter schools are accountable while public schools are not, and “union-dominated monopolies [like public education] routinely fail their customers.”
The problem is, repeat these lies often enough and they become “common wisdom.” That kind of thinking is what led Gov. Pataki to propose tuition tax credits for parents who send their children to private and parochial schools. [See story, "3,000 march in Albany for tax credit".] While these schools may need help, research shows they do no better on average than public schools with the same demographic mix of students.
So it’s important to set Stossel — and those who promote his brand of agenda-driven journalism — straight. And that’s what we’re going to do on March 8. Join us.
