The Great Debate

The debate around Steven Brill’s new book “Class Warfare” continues to swirl. A review/essay in Monday’s New York Times by Michael Winerip accused Brill of largely ignoring the views and experiences of teachers. Like some other Brill critics, Winerip accused the book of overstating the success of charter schools, and overallocating blame for failed schools to teachers’ unions where other factors–such as poverty–may be at work.

Brill felt Winerip’s criticism was misguided and had a bit of a personal attack in it. He attempted to post a response Sunday night to the Times‘s Web site. When, Monday morning, that response remained unposted (despite more than a dozen later comments going up), Reuters.com published it. He said it felt “almost as if [Winerip had] been waiting to unload on me for years,” and in turn accused Winerip of not using proper data to understand charter school performance in Harlem.

Then, later Monday morning, the Times site, got around to publishing Brill’s response, and about an hour later, Winerip replied to the reply. You can read that exchange in full here.