Dear Morning Edition:

Claudio Sanchez lost all credibility with me Tuesday June 18 when he decided to air a straight story about the dishonest and misleading hack piece that the National Council on Teacher Quality dropped that morning. A quick look at the internet should have told him better: Deans of Education, real national thought leaders, and the attentive public agree on the harm wrought by this transparently ideological attack on teacher education. A quick look at the NCTQ’s board would confirm that it’s a right-wing scare machine taking aim yet again at the institution of public schooling in order to supplant it with market-based reforms and business-friendly privatization schemes, all wrapped in ostensible concern for the children (or, in this case, the hapless first-year teachers supposedly being exploited by teacher educators’ laziness and refusal to “evolve”). And the Geraldo-style “gotcha” bit with the Dean of ETSU’s College of Education was way beneath the standards I’ve come to expect from NPR.

As a teacher educator and a citizen who believes in public education, I’m appalled. If Sanchez can’t vet stuff better, please replace him at the Education Desk with someone who can. The stakes are way too high for this nonsense.

Chris Osmond PhD