EduShyster Explains the New York Times’ Infatuation with “Excellence”

6 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

1. Jon Awbrey says:

   September 15, 2013 at 2:08 pm

   LikeLike

   Reply
2. adpirz (@adpirz) says:

   September 15, 2013 at 5:53 pm

   I have literally no idea what he’s trying to say. Are we saying excellence is something to not aspire to anymore?

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Dee Dee says:

     September 15, 2013 at 7:11 pm

     What excellence?

     LikeLike

     Reply
3. George Schmidt says:

   September 15, 2013 at 8:19 pm

   Shyster is definitely having a good time, but from the point of view of Chicago, the way The New York Times sets the “record” straight has been an unpleasant reality for a long long time. Times reporters have gone out of their way not to quote teachers and the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union in their “He said, but she said” versions of reality. On some stories, I’ve checked to be sure that the Times didn’t even bother to call.

   One of the unfunny things about the way in which Times writers (and most of them are no longer reporters, a very different breed) distort reality for their pretentious “first rough draft of history” is that they are addicted to the “He said, but she said…” version of reality, as if there were two sides to every story, and those “sides” were each of equal weight.

   As a result, in Chicago the non-teacher shills overpopulating the Chicago Public Schools “Office Of Communications” (a $2 million per year propaganda department headed by a $165,000-per-year bureaucrat who has never taught and who was, shall we say charitably, “challenged” in high school math) get more weight than any hundred teachers of dozen facts. The Times doesn’t even demand that the quotes from CPS come from the quarter million dollar a year “Chief Executive Officer” here — the latest is the lady from Broad who destroyed Detroit’s public schools, Barbara Byrd Bennett — talk to The Times. Instead, any shill with today’s talking point is OK.

   This Judith Miller School of Journalism has polluted the public record for years with nonsense that is then quoted and recycled in the academic and other media.

   I have to share a recent favorite example of how this kind of auto-eroticism in journalism works. The “writers” are trained to do “He said, but she said” — no matter what they can see before their eyes before proclaiming their expertise. CPS Communications Chief Officer Becky Carroll at regularly demonstrates that she couldn’t calculate their way out of a 9th grade Algebra final (which in fact was one of her bigger problems back in the day). So she gets to repeat, over and over, that CPS has a “billion dollar deficit” as long as no reporters ask for more information. As a result, in August 2013, after proclaiming (a) that CPS had “zeroed out” its “reserves” one year earlier and (b) that CPS was facing a “billion dollar deficit” that (c) required the closing of an unprecedented 50 real public schools to (d) save money because of the financial “crisis” caused by the “billion dollar deficit.”

   Then….

   KAZAAM!

   CPS officials found more than $600 million in those “reserves” that didn’t exist and suddenly, for this year at least, the “deficit” had been made to disappear (after gutting the schools, of course, and expanding charter schools)…

   Maybe this kind of criminally negligent writing about Chicago’s schools is not as serious and consequential as the Judith Miller stuff that helped lead the USA into the Iraq War, but it’s up there in that same reality.

   As a result, it’s best to read the “news” reports in The Times (they insist you capitalize the “The”) as ruling class propaganda. Now and then the facts accidentally intrude, but usually they are a very nice example of BS (I’ve decided not to us the full word because my nine-year-old is standing here with me as I finish this).

   LikeLike

   Reply
4. GatorBonBC (@GatorBonBC) says:

   September 15, 2013 at 8:43 pm

   Love Shyster… so don’t love the NY Post, though.

   I just read this quote about your book. in the NY Post review: “Education Secretary Duncan has said, “Diane Ravitch is in denial and she is insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country who are proving her wrong every day.”

   Pfft … Really, Arne? Ha ! I say name one teacher who doesn’t respect what Ravitch is doing these days … and now name one who DOES like Arne. #None

   http://nypost.com/2013/09/14/author-shows-how-ridiculous-arguments-are-against-school-reform/

   No worries, Diane… there are thousands upon thousands of teachers communicating about your new book. They all fully support what you are doing to tell the truth about privatization and high stakes testing. You know, this teacher and parent, for one, will be countering the Post, argument by argument. #WeGotYourBack

   LikeLike

   Reply
5. Communist Teacher says:

   September 15, 2013 at 8:52 pm

   Right on target as usual. It would be great if some of these NYT clowns get to read
   Shyster’s article and reflect on what out of touch, effete, snobs they really are.

   LikeLike

   Reply