No surprises in this lame letter to the editor in the NYT from the head of the AFT, responding to David Brooks' brilliant Op Ed (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2008/06/obama-liberalism-and-challenge-of.html), in which he spouts the usual woe-is-us, blame-the-victim drivel:

June 20, 2008

Letter

Teachers' Union on Reform

To the Editor:

Re "Obama, Liberalism and the Challenge of Reform" (column, June 13):

Having spent the primary season lauding Senator Barack Obama, David Brooks is doing a pivot by now questioning Mr. Obama's substance and true policy stance. He actually manages a twofer, sowing doubts about Senator Obama and knocking unions at the same time, all under the guise of concern for education. And who isn't concerned about education these days?

Mr. Brooks would like you to believe it is unions, of course. We know this because right off the bat, Mr. Brooks helpfully explains to us that there are two education camps, the reformists and those who prefer the status quo. He believes that unionized teachers fall into the latter camp.

The occasion for this commentary is the release of a statement by the Economic Policy Institute, covering a broad range of actions important to achieving real improvements in education, especially for disadvantaged students and dropouts (an overlapping group).

The signers include a wide array of education and public policy experts, scholars, children's advocates, civil rights figures, as well as current and former school superintendents, and a Nobel Prize winner in economics.

They state that "despite the impressive academic gains registered by some schools serving disadvantaged students, there is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can close these gaps in a substantial, consistent, and sustainable manner." Therefore, "school improvement, to be fully effective, must be complemented by a broader definition of schooling and by improvements in the social and economic circumstances of disadvantaged youth."

Mr. Brooks takes issue with this. According to him, reformists "insist school reform alone can make a big difference." This verges on a Talmudic debate over the word "alone" when the real issues are what actually goes into that reform. The question of how teachers should grapple with the enormous social problems brought into the school every morning comes immediately to mind.

Further, he talks of how the reformists want to put the children first. Well, so do those who signed the E.P.I. statement, and so do teachers. What matters is whether what you try actually works for the children.

Blaming "ineffective teachers" and union contracts may be ideologically satisfying, but at the end of the day it does little to solve the problems facing our schools. If our problems did lie here, states without collective bargaining should not lie at the bottom of the educational achievement scale, and charter schools should by now have produced some greater returns. Yet the lack of evidence does not stop the "reformists" from assailing unions, or any public servant who may agree with our solutions.

Senator Obama is not failing to "engage the thorny, substantive matters that separate the two camps"; he simply isn't falling for a debate on the meaning of the word "alone."

Edward J. McElroy
President, American Federation of Teachers
Washington, June 18, 2008