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Posted on Mar 29, 2011
By Bill Boyarsky
With all the evil people in the world, why are public schoolteachers being villainized? And how did they attract such powerful enemies?
Some of the country’s best-known mainstream powers are blaming the teachers for the troubles of the public school system. Bill Gates is a leader in this, as is President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan. So are some operators of multibillion-dollar hedge funds.
By putting the blame on teachers and their relatively modest salaries and benefits—compared with those of, say, a hedge fund entrepreneur—so-called reformers are evading the real cause of troubled schools: Business and political leaders, aided and abetted by the mass media, are unwilling to spend enough money to support public schools. Tax increases aren’t good for Microsoft, hedge funds or Obama’s re-election chances.