SF Gate publishes anti-teacher op-ed by lawsuit board member--without disclosure
by David Atkins
My brother Dante made a great catch on Twitter today, noting that the SF Gate newspaper just published an an anti-teacher op-ed by a board member of Students Matter on a trial in progress being brought by Students Matter--without attribution.
You may recall my writing about the Vergara v. California trial, which is a thinly-veiled assault on protections for public sector teachers and teachers unions themselves. The lawsuit is being driven forward by "Students Matter", a billionaire-backed "reform" group attempting to push forward the privatization of education under the theory that protections for public sector teachers undermine student civil rights. In reality, the goal is to make teachers at will employees, firable for any reason at all, working for very low pay.
Here is who is behind the front group Students Matter:
The main backers of the case against teachers are the ultra-wealthy magnates Eli Broad, Charles Schwab and Fischer family (owners of the Gap, among other things.) Billionaires have been aggressively funding education "reform" efforts for years under the theory that there's nothing wrong with education that destroying teachers' unions and privatizing education can't fix. It's important to remember that these are the same people who spent millions in 2012 trying to defeat California's Proposition 30 to fund schools, and to pass Proposition 32 preventing unions from spending on elections while allowing corporations free rein.
The SF Gate op-ed is riddled with falsehoods and inaccuracies about the case, and was penned by one Russlynn Ali.
Russlynn Ali is on the advisory board of Students Matter.
The SF Gate needs to make it known when they're publishing an op-ed from a source with a clear stake in the matter on which they're writing.
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