It is funny, exciting, surprising and deep. Brill is a remarkable person, a reporter who became a mogul, creating American Lawyer magazine, Court TV, Brill’s Content magazine and Press+, a new business model for journalism online. But he still likes reporting.
Even his footnotes should not be missed. Brill said the American Federation of Teachers praised a union-designed teacher evaluation program in Toledo that looked better than it was because the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a backer of the project, was not checking the data. Harvard said the union’s system in Toledo cleaned out ineffective teachers regularly, until an independent review found only one dismissal in two years. Brill said self-reporting by the union and the school system “had included, among other inaccuracies, the counting of substitute teachers who had quit or had no longer been offered assignments as ‘dismissals of tenured teachers.’ ”
Brill’s footnote said: “Asked why she had not disclosed initially that the numbers were based on self-reporting rather than an examination of the actual records,” the Harvard professor in charge “told me she thought that ‘would have been obvious, but I do remember asking one of my assistants to add that disclosure, which I guess never happened.’ Asked to name the assistant, she hung up.” (Toledo union officials told me their reports were correct because, in Ohio, long-term subs must be extended the rights of regular contract teachers.)
The book has much to say about Washington.
Brill tells how an obscure New York City teacher’s contract arbitration hearing led to Michelle A. Rhee’s becoming the head of D.C. schools. In June 2005, Rhee had testified on hiring data that made the AFT local look bad. So she appeared to be just what the D.C. mayor and his advisers had in mind when they went looking for a union-fighting schools chancellor. She tried to turn the job down, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Brill is most recently famous for his New Yorker piece exposing New York’s “Rubber Room,” a place where teachers the city was trying to fire were paid full salaries to do nothing. He takes the side of those who are suspicious of teacher unions, supportive of public school charters and wanting to use student test scores to assess teachers.
People on the other side should still read the book because he exposes weaknesses in his camp, too.
Brill said then-New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, for political reasons, agreed to appear with the head of the New York teachers union, Michael Mulgrew, before a Race to the Top review panel and pretend that the two of them, in truth sworn enemies, were cooperating for the good of the city.
That was not as bad for the chancellor as the day when, despite his hopeful expectations to the contrary, the deeply flawed, union-hamstrung New York grant application was declared one of the winners. Klein told me that he was not pretending and had genuine hopes, but he noted that the union has since blocked the state’s plan.
It is hard to forget Brill’s stories, fortunately. No matter what our politics, we Washington readers can at least get from this book a healthy skepticism about any federal or state attempts — past, present or future — to take our schools to a new level with all stakeholders happily on board.
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