I am becoming crotchety

For the first time in my life, I just wrote a letter to the New York Times editor - this article just got me too aggravated not to. Since I have no hopes of it actually being published, I thought I'd post it here so someone besides the Times' spam filter will see it. It was a lot more ornery, but Ben helped me tone it down in the spirit of reasonable discourse.

To the Editor:

Mr. Winerip admonishes several public education reformers for not having attended public schools themselves, while neglecting to mention that several have taught (Michelle Rhee, David Levin) or led (Marc Sternberg) in them. Did those experiences not provide them with insight into the public school system?

Mr. Winerip’s larger oversight is his conflation of all public schools into one category, as if any one public school district (e.g. Quincy, MA, where Mr. Winerap attended school) is interchangeable with the next (e.g. Roxbury, MA, not ten miles away). According to the latest census data, a mere 6.7% of families live below the poverty level in high-performing Quincy, and 72.5% are white. In Roxbury, where student achievement is more faltering, 25.7% of families live in poverty, and whites are a minority.  To students in struggling urban school districts, affluent and racially homogenous districts like Quincy are just as alien as Phillips Exeter.

Lastly, the assertion that Michelle Rhee is “education’s Sarah Palin” is blatantly partisan to the point of offense. Perhaps she is education’s Gloria Steinem, or MLK – or perhaps she is a complicated political figure to whom people are entitled different opinions. Mr. Winerip’s opinions of her and her colleagues should be presented as such, not as fact.

Caroline Rubin
(Student from an affluent suburban public school, teacher from a not-so-affluent urban one)