Who owns the media, even the “public” media? A Teacher in Bed-Stuy Posts to Beth Fertig's Blog

A teacher posted this today on Beth Fertig's News Blog on WNYC's website:

When will the press expose the “distraction”, to use Obama’s term, that charter schools provide for a system that is truly unwilling to reform itself? I am a teacher with 30 years in the DOE. My elementary school in Bedford-Stuyvesant experienced reform in the early 1990s, sponsored by the Office of School Reform and the UFT. It worked and transformed us in meaningful ways.

Twenty years later we are reaping the benefits of that initiative and are expanding our enrollment while all neighboring schools are losing theirs and subsequently having to share their building with a second or third school, sometimes a charter school. We benefited from funding opportunities then that no longer exist for us now, because funders are putting their money into charter schools.

We have devastating midyear budget cuts that they don’t have. Who will expose the fact that while they may have a lottery for their students, ultimately they get to pick and choose them and their parents? They cap their numbers by the late October head count and begin to weed out the troublesome and academically low-performing students from then on in time for the state exams.

Of course, they are going to look like they are doing a great job. We have to take those students back and work with the students they don’t want. In the end this exclusive private system within the public system is being supported by cuts to our budgets. The majority of public school children, who will never attend a charted school, will lose out in overcrowded classrooms in schools that have had to drop arts-in-education partnerships and after school programs, the services that made us great and helped to bolster their achievement and love of learning.

Who in the media is going to question a system that won’t spread reform to every school in order to benefit every child? Who wants to understands what is really happening in our midst, in the name of “school reform”? There is a travesty going on and they get away with it, because no one will report it.

Begs the question: Who owns the media, even the “public” media?

Say It Ain't So Elizabeth

We knew it was coming. Still, it was a shock see this headline in today's NY Times:

Losing Money, New York Sun Is to Shut Down

Yes, the home base of Elizabeth Green, the best education reporter I've seen in NYC, is publishing its last issue today. Elizabeth is quoted in the article:

“I don’t think it’s going to be hard for people to remember the role of this newspaper,” said Elizabeth Green, an education reporter who had worked for The Sun for 16 months. She defined that role as “people committed to having a substantial conversation and holding our leaders accountable.”

And she certainly did hold them accountable. That the conservative NY Sun allowed her such free reign to write comprehensive articles that so often nailed issues that the other papers were ignoring is remarkable.

From her first days in NYC, she scouted out all the players on the ed scene, not just the spokespeople. She even reached out to the ICE as an opposition caucus to the Unity dominated UFT to get our point of view even if she didn't always use our quotes. She got to know everybody on the scene, often meeting them for breakfast (I'm still waiting for mine.)

She was probably the only reporter who had direct access to Eduwonkette when she was anonymous and everyone was trying to expose her. Elizabeth inspired a level of trust even among teachers who so often mistrust reporters and when there was a story brewing, many of us handed it off to her.

In our last conversation she said she didn't want to leave the education beat, something which so many reporters who finally get to know the local scene end up doing.

Here's hoping Elizabeth Green is grabbed up by someone, hopefully in NYC. But if she's not given the room to roam she had with the Sun, it would all be a waste. I told her that if she ever got to work for the NY Times, I would bet she would find limits on her ability to expose BloomKlein because they seem to have a dog in the race.

So here's the challenge to the NY Times education editor. Hire Elizabeth Green and turn her loose. If they do, I expect to get that breakfast Elizabeth owes me.

Update:
See Leonie Haimson's tribute to Elizabeth Green:

On the blog, I write about the loss of Erin Einhorn, Mike Meenan, and now Elizabeth Green– and also recaps some of Elizabeth’s greatest hits

Education beat losing its best reporters...and now Elizabeth Green.