In a rare front page commentary about the large crowd* that showed up to cheer on the winless Roosevelt High School girls' basketball team in their final season home game, O columnist Steve Duin, speaking bluntly, let Portland Public Schools know what he thinks of its transfer policy:
He points out that Roosevelt, a facility built for 2000 students, now enrolls a mere 700, 80% of whom meet the district's free and reduced lunch poverty standard.
Well done, Steve Duin.
(The Lady Roughriders lost again, by the way, but it was a nail biter -- 31 - 29.)
Meanwhile, over on the O's editorial page, Leslie Spencer was inveighing vociferously against public schools and the Oregon Education Association, and praising ...school choice! Spencer cited a libertarian poll that supposedly showed that hardly anyone, Democrat or Republican, wants to send their kids to public schools.
According to Spencer, the major obstacle to choice (and education nirvana) is, of course, the teachers' union, which uses its members dues "...to fight any type of school reform that threatens its monopoly on power."
Well, perhaps. But Spencer fails to mention that the political arm of the OEA, People for the Improvement of Education, the ones who democratically determine union endorsements, is funded with voluntary donations, not by members' dues.
Leslie Spencer has a long history of bashing teachers' unions and espousing libertarian causes. But here's the corker:
In 1994, Spencer married Lewis and Clark law professor, James Huffman, Federalist Society member and ardent defender of property rights. Now there's a libertarian match made in heaven.
*(Duin himself was largely responsible for the turnout.)
I'm glad Duin mentioned the transfer policy and that so many turned up for the game. But don't you think it's a little questionable for him to be responsible for getting so many folks there and then to report on it and pat himself on the back, too? It seems that he's a little too involved in the creation of the news rather than the reporting of the news. Don't get me wrong, the result for the girls was wonderful.
Posted by: Marian | February 20, 2009 at 06:12 PM
I don't know that Duin patted himself on the back, Marian. I have to give him credit, though, for getting lots of people to pay some attention to Roosevelt and the difficulties it faces.
Mainly, however, I was impressed with his reference to the PPS transfer policy, which really does undermine neighborhood schools and sense of community.
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