NY Times letter to the editor

After such a well-done article on Sunday (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2009/12/scholarly-investments_05.html), the NY Times sure dropped the ball on the follow-up letters to the editor. I took a fair amount of time drafting this letter, sent it on Monday, and got a call mid-day yesterday saying they were going to run it, but needed to confirm “Whitney Tilson, New York, NY” (don’t ask me why – that was part of my letter). Unfortunately, I was on the flight back from Mexico City. By the time I landed and returned the call and email, I was told the issue had closed at 2:30pm, so I was an hour too late. Gee, it would have been nice if I’d been given more than a couple of hours to reply… Here is my letter:

To the editor:

I was one of the hedge fund managers quoted in your article, "Scholarly Investments," and was pleased to see the attention drawn to the New York investment community's support for innovative, high-performing public charter schools.

I must take issue, however, with UFT President Michael Mulgrew's comments. First, he says "these people are finally stepping up to support education." The investment community has in fact generously supported public education for years. Now, after decades of seeing our money squandered by a bureaucratic and unaccountable system – a state of affairs due, in large part, to the actions of Mr. Mulgrew's union – we are focusing on changing the system.

Mr. Mulgrew's wish that our support would be "in a more foundational way, a way that would help all the children instead of just a small group," misses the point. The main reason these remarkable schools serve only a small group of children is because his union has done everything in its power to cripple them: for instance seeking to deny them space in public facilities, and lobbying to cap their numbers and cut their funding. High-performing charter schools do help all children by serving as laboratories of innovation and providing much-needed competition.

Mr. Mulgrew's real complaint is that few charter schools are unionized. That's because of how hard it is to run a great school within the straightjacket of the teachers' union contract.


Whitney Tilson
New York, NY