Seattle Schools Community Forum

The Times continues its march towards becoming less of a newspaper and more of an mouthpiece for ed reform. Folks, I have personally heard from a number of Times' editors/writers who continue to claim that there is a solid wall between editorial and reporting.  That may be true in some areas but that is not true for education reporting especially on ed reform.  What do they do? - they lean the reporting towards ed reform, doing things like only getting a comment from an ed reform person and not anyone directed associated with the opposition.  This has happened several times. - they mislead readers (see Lynne Varner saying that the Washington State Charter Schools Association will "review" the charter applications which would lead the average reader to believe the WSCSA will be the ones picking the winners.  They aren't - it's the Washington State Charter Commission (and the lone district authorizer, Spokane) who will decide but Varner doesn't mention t...

Let's review the Times coverage of the Washington charter school law this week. On the charter law court ruling, they manage to confuse readers with two different headlines but settled on one that makes it sound like it was upheld but " questions remain."    Then, they only quote the pro-charter side  (going to their go-to source, Lisa Macfarlane).   They do quote the plaintiffs' lawyer but that's not the same as going to sources who oppose charters (like some of the actual plaintiffs). Next comes Lynne Varner and other mistake-ridden education opinion along with her usual shot at the teachers' union. First, she hilariously says that Judge Rietschel's opinion is "antiquated" because it comes from our "constitutional framers."  (I'm guessing that she would never agree with Supreme Court justice Scalia who is a strict constitutionalist.)  The problem is that we have the Constitution that exists and until that is changed, she...