Michelle Rhee (in photo), chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, is making the Washington Teachers’ Union an offer that many of its 4,000 members may find hard to resist. With financing provided by private foundation, Rhee is offering raises of as much as $40,000 if teachers are willing to give up tenure. Rhea argues that tenure hurts children by making is hard to fire incompetent teachers, while the union contends that tenure protects teachers from arbitrary firings.
The New York Times has a funny article about Martin Eisenstadt, a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy and supposedly an adviser to John McCain. He’s been cited by MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times and many bloggers. But he also is fake, as are the Harding Institute and the TV interview clips of him on YouTube. It was all an elaborate spoof created by two guys who, sadly but accurately, say that their success reflects the shoddiness of media fact-checking. Said one of the spoofers: “With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find.”
