Teachers Protest L.A. Times
The L.A. Unified School District Teachers Union made good on their promise to protest the Los Angeles Times over the papers release of evaluations of over 6,000 teachers in the district.
From FishbowlLA
The controversy surrounding the LA Times’ decision to publish an online database of teachers’ effectiveness isn’t going away any time soon. Yesterday, hundreds of teachers from the LA Unified School District gathered outside the Times’ downtown headquarters in protest.
“I feel, in a way, betrayed,” Lee Bartoletti of Ivanhoe Elementary School in Silver Lake told a Times reporter. “The Times has reneged on its mission of telling the truth.”
The protest was organized by the union United Teachers Los Angeles, which has also called for a boycott of the paper. The UTLA website didn’t have much to say on the matter, posting only a sentence or two about the protest.
“Members give the L.A. Times a consistent grade: F.”
The union tried using the protest as a way to spin their story that the Times’ release of the teacher evaluation data was the equivalent of leaking classified government documents.
What they are really mad about is that the scoring of the teachers shows that there are below grade teachers in the system and that children aren’t always getting the best education possible.
The unions are in the business of protecting their members at any cost and the thought of actually holding teachers accountable for student performance is an anathema to them
Kudos to the Times for standing up to the union and giving the children in Los Angeles a chance at a better education.
Don Irvine is the chairman of both Accuracy in Media, where this column originally appeared as a blog, and Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org.
Don Irvine
Donald Irvine is the chairman of of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. Irvine follows his father’s legacy, Reed Irvine, to critically analyze the liberal media’s bias and brings over thirty years of media analysis experience. He has published countless blog posts and articles on media bias, in context of current events, and he has been interviewed by many news media outlets during his professional career. He currently hosts a livestream weekly show on AIA’s Facebook page which discusses current events.
Irvine graduated from the University of Maryland and rose up the ranks to become chairman of Accuracy in Media until his transition to AIA.
He resides in the suburbs around the nation’s capital and is a proud father and grandfather.
