Pundit Nick Kristof Gets It Wrong

In a recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof does plenty of collateral damage as he bashes teacher unions for over-protecting incompetent teachers. Kristof's commentary is so over the top that he effectively smears every good and dedicated public school teacher in the nation -- and there are several million of them.

Maybe he's intoxicated by Halloween. The Times columnist substitutes scary teacher stories for any credible data about the actual numbers of incompetent teachers (3-5% by most estimates) and ignores recent research suggesting that the unions are not the biggest problem. All that ails public education, Kristof asserts, is the union goblins who focus on benefits for their members at the expense of children.

Education Notes Online does a terrific job of unpacking Kristof’s diatribe, drawing on commentary by Steve Koss at the NYC Education News Listserve.

Ariel Sacks, who writes the blog On the Shoulders of Giants, is a brilliant young teacher in NYC (and a member of the Teacher Leaders Network). In a recent post, she paints a much more accurate picture of the complexities of the "incompetent teacher" problem. We've got to make it easier to fire incompetent teachers, but we've got to do it fairly, using sound measures of competence and a system that protects teachers from abuse.

If we want to figure out how to begin to solve the real problem, we need to glean the insights of New Millennium teachers like Ariel, who are committed to improving the teaching profession and to making teachers equal partners in school reform.

Comments

[Claus]

Very nice posting. I think the difference between Kristof's and Sacks's commentaries reflect the differences between armchair pundits and actual practitioners.

Ariel does not take the easy way out in her commentary, not by any means. But her approach assigns responsibility to many quarters. The pundits seldom do that.