A Liberal Journalist Discovers That Democrats Aren't For The Little Guy

Especially when that little guy is a public school student.

Steven Brill’s New Yorker article on “The Rubber Room,” an account of the thousands of New York City public school teachers who are paid, in the high five figures or even six figures, to show up at windowless offices and not teach at all. Brill, longtime proprietor of the American Lawyer, has spent most of his life at the top levels of American society, superintending some very interesting reporting but, when it comes to opinion, doing little more than mouthing liberal clichés. He’s used to dealing with very smart and able people. I suspect that for years he’s accepted, without thinking about it much one way or the other, the belief that if governments spend more money on public services, ordinary people and the poor will be helped.

Brill is clearly shocked and appalled at what he sees in the Rubber Rooms in New York. His accounts of the maladjusted and utterly incompetent teachers he finds there are vivid and terrific reporting; his accounts of the rationalization of teacher union officials for this appalling system make clear, despite his clear and graceful prose, that he is enraged by what this system costs taxpayers and, even more, by what it denies children who are most in need of help. As Mickey Kaus puts it in his Twitter-length link to Brill’s article: “Everyone hates the teachers’ unions now.”

The Washington Post figures it out too.

As we've said before, vouchers aren't the answer to Washington's school troubles; we enthusiastically support public school reform and quality charter schools, too. But vouchers are an answer for some children whose options otherwise are bleak. In Washington, they also are part of a carefully designed social-science experiment that may provide useful evidence for all schools on helping low-income children learn. Why would a Democratic administration and Congress want to cut such an experiment short?

I'm hoping that the Post's question is rhetorical. After all, the answer is self-evident.