http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/nyt-columnist-blames-scott-walker-teacher-layoffs-occurred-he-was-governor_852171.html?nopager=1NYT Columnist Blames Scott Walker for Teacher Layoffs That Occurred Before He Was Governor
John McCormack
February 14, 2015 8:26 AM
New York Times columnist Gail Collins writes about Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's recent speech in Iowa:
Mainly, though, The Speech was about waging war on public employee unions, particularly the ones for teachers. “In 2010, there was a young woman named Megan Sampson who was honored as the outstanding teacher of the year in my state. And not long after she got that distinction, she was laid off by her school district,” said Walker, lacing into teacher contracts that require layoffs be done by seniority.
All of that came as a distinct surprise to Claudia Felske, a member of the faculty at East Troy High School who actually was named a Wisconsin Teacher of the Year in 2010. In a phone interview, Felske said she still remembers when she got the news at a “surprise pep assembly at my school.” As well as the fact that those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education [emphasis added].
Actually, Wisconsin names four teachers of the year, none of which has ever been Megan Sampson, who won an award for first-year English teachers given by a nonprofit group. But do not blame any of this on Sampson, poor woman, who was happily working at a new school in 2011 when Walker made her the star victim in an anti-union opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. At the time, she expressed a strong desire not to be used as a “poster child for this political agenda,” and you would think that after that the governor would leave her alone. Or at least stop saying she was teacher of the year.
There are two problems in this section of Collins's column: First, she accuses Walker of dishonesty, but she's just quibbling over semantics. Is it really inaccurate to describe someone named an "outstanding first-year teacher" by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English as a "teacher of the year" for short? I've never seen much of a difference: In the headline of this 2011 piece, I described Sampson as a "teacher of the year," but in the body of the piece I precisely described her award. Walker has been telling this story for four years, and no one thought his description of Sampson was dishonest until Gail Collins heard about it.
But the big error in Collins's piece is her claim that "those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education." As you can see in the excerpt above, Collins is talking about teacher layoffs that occurred in 2010. Walker did not become governor until 2011.
The truth is that Walker's reforms actually saved teachers' jobs. Right before the 2012 Wisconsin recall election, Walker's Democratic opponent Tom Barrett couldn't name a single school that had been hurt by Walker's policies. When Walker's 2014 Democratic opponent Mary Burke was asked to name any schools hurt by Walker's collective bargaining reform, she relayed an anecdote she'd heard secondhand about one school. Burke's story didn't check out, and the superintendent of that school wrote a letter telling Burke she didn't know what she was talking about.
That's a good reminder for Gail Collins (and the rest of us): Always check your facts.
