Saturday coffee.
The late Daniel Schorr was too Jewish for the NY Times.
One of summer’s pleasures is Anne and I heading for a movie on a hot, muggy Friday afternoon. Somehow it feels like cheating. Unfortunately the movie was Inception, which was long and dumb. Bill and Ted without laughs.
The rains started coming down as the movie let out and, man, did it rain. Seven inches overnight. There is some water in the basement. One Chicago expressway was closed 9 miles, all the way to the city limits, because of flooding.
We had to trudge through the mud at the farmers market this morning. But we brought five knives for Dave, the knife sharpener. One of the knives belonged to Anne’s mother. She probably got it when she first married Anne’s dad over 65 years ago. She used it to cut the Christmas roast beef into thin slices. But we haven’t used it for years because it was so dull it couldn’t cut mashed potatoes. But now, thanks to Dave…
Daniel Schorr was too Jewish for the New York Times.
Most of the obituaries for Daniel Schorr talk about the Watergate days and his making Nixon’s enemies list. But the obit in the New York Times recalls the days when the Times had a Jewish quota for reporters.
The Times offered him a job but suggested he return to the Netherlands for a few weeks while details were worked out. In early February 1953, that country was devastated by a severe storm, and Mr. Schorr’s dispatches so impressed Murrow, one of the most respected broadcast journalists working then, that he cabled him — Mr. Schorr recalled the exact words more than a half-century later — asking, “Would you at all consider joining the staff of CBS News with an initial assignment in Washington?”
Mr. Schorr still preferred The Times, but when he didn’t hear further, he inquired and learned that the offer had been withdrawn. As Mr. Schorr told the story, an editor later sheepishly explained that the paper was concerned that too many Jewish bylines might jeopardize its coverage of the Mideast.
Rhee and Duncan conspire to fire DC teachers. It is simply unethical.
In response to Michelle Rhee firing hundreds of DC teachers, the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss points out the obvious. It is professionally unethical to use a test to evaluate something it was not designed to evaluate, and then to use the results to make decisions.
Professional ethics. Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. What am I thinking?
Judging teachers on the test scores of their students is all the rage in school reform these days — thanks so much, Education Secretary Arne Duncan — but, frankly, this is unconscionable for several reasons, not the least of which is that DC CAS wasn’t designed to evaluate teachers. That’s a basic violation of testing law. Ask any evaluation expert.
The Chicago Tribune and the teachable moment.
The IEA reports on the thousands who responded to the Chicago Tribune’s teacher bashing lies.
Thank you for saying, “Enough is enough.”
Thank you for caring so much about students and education that you caused a mammoth increase in the number of visitors to the IEA Website over the last week.
To see web traffic surge by thousands of visitors daily, in the middle of summer without a “legislative call to action,” is truly remarkable and unprecedented.
And a special thank you to the IEA members who have so eloquently poured out their hearts about their students and their profession in letters to the Chicago Tribune.
