How Steve Brill Manufactured a Fictional Teacher

Patrick Walsh, Chapter Leader at PS 149 in Harlem, a school co-located with an Eva Moskowitz Harlem Success Academy school, exposes one of the numerous distortions in the Steve Brill "Class Warfare" book. Of course that wouldn't stop our national union leader Randi Weingarten who is so praised in Brill's book, from holding a book party for him at her home ( Weingarten Holds Book Party for Steve Brill ...).

Patrick is writing to hedge fund major dome ed deformer Half-Whitney Tilson.

The Fourth Grade Teacher Who Does Not Exist

Dear Mr. Tilson,

A couple of days ago I was given a copy of S. Brill’s Class Warfare, a book I find as astoundingly unethical as Davis Guggenheim weepy propaganda film, Waiting for  Superman. There are many things I find lazy, cheap and grossly offensive about S. Brill’s reportage but none more than his description of the PS 149 fourth grade teacher with his  feet on the desk bellowing on mindlessly about the days of the week to his  18 students that you and your  friend G. Rubenstein found so instructive and revealing in a blog post of August 29.

In the post your friend wants Brill to ask Principal I. A. Harper to identify the fellow.

Brill, as you might recall, refuses and suggests instead that either you or Rubenstein do so as both the teacher and Harper are “public officials.”

There was a good reason Brill dodged your question:  the fourth grade teacher fourth grade teacher with his  feet on the desk bellowing on mindlessly about the days of the week to his  18 students doesn’t exist.  I know.  I am the chapter leader at the school and there has not been a male fourth grade teacher there for all the years I’ve worked there. Nor is there any possibility that Brill could have simply confused grades. There was only one goateed teacher at 149 at that time and he would have never engaged in such behavior, placed his feet on a desk and bellowed about anything. Nor would he have had anything to do with the fourth grade. Nor does he wear sweat shirts and jeans.  What Brill saw was a substitute teacher. He also saw an opportunity to make union teachers look like slobs which, evidently he could not pass up despite the fact that is was based on pure nonsense.

Most lazy and most unethical, would you not agree?  And deeply offensive to the colleagues I see exhausting themselves for our children day after day after day.

That a person like Harper would “ seem to know exactly whom” Brill was referring to is also rich.  Tell your friend Rubenstein not to bother asking Harper about the phantom’s (worthless) value added metrics not merely because they don’t exist but because Harper

was demoted and sent packing – but not before she demoralized the entire faculty and drove out a third who could not get away from her fast enough.

There are many things in Brill’s book that will be exposed as something other than what Brill claims they are.   Perhaps you’ll read of them.

Sincerely,

Patrick Walsh

Chapter Leader PS/ MS 149

Harlem, New York