News:
Heroes & Zeroes

Bill Cosby’s got his priorities straight. A recent episode of the “Cosby” show visited an alternative universe where teachers, not athletes, make millions of dollars, and educators live a lifestyle complete with groupies, shoe contracts, and school supply endorsements. “What we want to do with this show,”says Cosby, “is really try to give some airpower to these teachers and superintendents and principals.”

ABC News correspondent John Stossel bashed public education big time in a recent “20/20” broadcast. Stossel alleged that “SAT scores are lower than they used to be,” that the public school graduation rate is just 49 percent, and that only 20 percent of teachers feel prepared to teach to high standards. “Given the level of inaccuracy in Stossel’s report,” notes the watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), “it’s worthwhile to note the irony—an error-filled attack on the supposedly low standards of our public education system.” Read more about Stossel at www.fair.org/activism/stossel-education.html.

Reda Thurman, a fourth grade teacher at Albany (Kentucky) Elementary School administered the Heimlich maneuver and saved a 9-year-old from choking on a piece of a pencil. Lucky kid. Thurman is a former emergency medical technician—and a very typical teacher. “When I’m in here with these kids, they are my kids, and I watch them as I would my own,” says this NEA member. “And I love them. They know that.”

At the start of a teacher salary dispute in New South Wales, Australia, state education and training director Ken Boston spent public money on newspaper ads that ridiculed and demeaned the profession. “Dr. Boston presented teachers as overpaid and underworked,” reports Iocal teacher leader Dick Shearman, “and he’s now pushing to cut wages in real terms over the next four years and worsen the conditions under which teachers do their work.”