Lewis on Sandy Hook Shooting Feedback
In case you were thinking that nothing could surpass Ravitch’s race into the gutter by politicizing the Newtown tragedy (see my previous post), the head of the Chicago teachers union, Karen Lewis, outdoes her (further reinforcing why I view her as a truly despicable human being). Below is her rant and commentary by Andy Rotherham and RiShawn Biddle. Here’s Rotherham:
You wonder if you should even call attention to such rank behavior and there is something of an “ick” factor to it, for lack of a better word. But Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers Union, the nation’s third largest teachers union and a force within the national American Federation of Teachers, found a way to make Ravitch look like a statesman while rushing to her defense. Writing of a Teach For America teacher or staff member who criticized Ravitch’s linking of the massacre to education policy, Lewis writes:
There might have been a time where “politicizing” tragic events, especially mass shootings was thought to be in poor taste. That has changed with the 24/7 news cycle that continues to focus far too much time and energy on the perpetrator of the massacre than that of our precious victims. Rosenberg’s “false outrage” needs to be checked. That same false outrage should show itself when policies his [TEACH FOR AMERICA*] colleagues support kill and disenfranchise children from schools across this nation. We in Chicago have been the victims of their experiments on our children since the current secretary of Education “ran” CPS.
There’s more. Ravitch, of course, posted the entire thing at the top of her blog to make sure no one missed it.
And here’s Biddle:
Yesterday, your editor chastised Ravitch for her nastiness. But as I mentioned then, Ravitch has found allies who will defend the indefensible. One of them is Karen Lewis, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who, in a correspondence with Ravitch published yesterday on the latter’s site, accused David Rosenberg, a vice president at Teach For America who criticized Ravitch publicly and demanded her to take down her nastiness, of “false outrage”. Lewis then went further by accusing reformers of advocating for policies that supposedly ”kill and disenfranchise children from schools across this nation”. Going further, Lewis declares that ChiTown students have been “victims of [school reform] experiments”, evoking some other imagery that is even more distasteful.
As I said yesterday: Wow. Just wow. Or as my dear departed grandma would say, Lewis just couldn’t keep it to herself just once.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 9:00 PM
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