In my experience, if you want to find a sympathetic ear in the media for public education, find someone who has a relative who teaches. Jon Stewart never fell for the teacher-bashing mania because his mother was a teacher. I have been interviewed on several occasions by talk show hosts who confessed that their mother or father was a teacher. They know how hard teachers work, and they share my outrage at the negative treatment of teachers and public schools today.
Yesterday someone sent me an article by Dick Yarbrough, a columnist in Georgia, thanking teachers for making it through another year. I immediately sensed that he had teachers in the family. Towards the end of his article, he mentions that four members of his family are teachers. That’s why he can’t stomach the absurd claims by legislators that teachers represent a class of overpaid, lazy people who are ripping off the public. Addressing teachers, he writes:
“Your rewards for your efforts are unpaid furlough days, larger class sizes, no pay increases (but increased expenses) and a second-guessing public that seems to feel you should be able to stop all of society’s ills at the classroom door. And then there are the politicians who promote “school choice.” That “choice” doesn’t seem to include making public schools better but it does include making all the other choices more attractive.”
What a pleasure to discover this very supportive open letter to the hard-working teachers of Georgia.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m feeling much the same in NYC, where we haven’t had a raise in four years and are being asked to make up snow days we didn’t use on June 25th and 26th. Personally, the only way I envision our making them up would be for it to snow both of those days. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Why would you make up snow days you didn’t use? Scratching my head on that one!
You’d have to ask the innovative Chancellor Walcott.
What will they do to you if EVERY SINGLE TEACHER stayed home?
&–not only stay out, but set up a march! 5,000 red-shirted teachers in Chicago just made a GREAT impact!
ReTired, I wish that the UFT leadership was as militant, as I have seen (granted just in clips) as the Chicago leaders are. Sadly, I, as well as a lot of others, feel that our union leaders are more interested in staying union leaders, as opposed to leading. The person running this city (Ms. Ravitch, I am trying really hard to stay away from the name calling, but it is admittedly very difficult) is an autocrat, and his decisions whenever he can are made out of hatred and pure ego. We are run by leadership that refuses to fight back, in any manor. They are the worst at PR, and allow the mayor and his minions to run roughshod over us. I can guarantee you that they will spend these two days on useless professional development, designed to pay their corporate buddies huge sums of money, and cost teachers, a lot of whom live on Long Island, a fortune in child care dollars and/or called in favors for child care.
I faithfully read “NYC Educator,” so I am all-too-aware of the terrible problems you have with NFT. I understand–we have similar problems
with the ILEd.Assn. Locals, here, are good,though, so I would depend
on locals to be able to carry the ball. (Can you try that?) Also, I’ve read that you have a number of principals who are greatly angered over the ridiculous testing, value-added evaluations, public postings of test outcomes as they relate to individual teachers, etc. Can they help you? I guess that I’m saying–in numbers there is strength.