HERE AT COMMONWEALTH we are great believers in open debate; that’s why we run so many opinion pieces. But sometimes the debate becomes so spirited that people want us to step in and become referees. One such instance was the recent back and forth between Jessica Tang, the president of the Boston Teachers Union, and Liam Kerr, director of the Massachusetts chapter of Democrats for Education Reform.

Tang wrote an opinion piece on October 30 defending teachers who end up in the so-called excess pool. The pool refers to those teachers who, because of any number of circumstances, find themselves without a classroom assignment and fail to get picked up by any Boston principal. Those in the excess pool are typically assigned some other work, such as a teacher’s aide, at their full salary.

Tang defended the teachers in the excess pool against what she described as a propaganda campaign run by Democrats for Education Reform. “DFER’s false and insulting narrative is not dissimilar from the divisive rhetoric of President Trump,” Tang wrote.

The Trump reference was too much for Kerr, who responded the following week with an article accusing Tang of weaving a “fact-free narrative” that mentioned Trump to divert attention from the wasteful spending that the excess pool represents. “With a thorny issue like the excess pool, a politician is better off pointing to Trump than proposing a solution,” he wrote.

It would have ended there, but Tang’s office strongly objected to three characterizations contained in Kerr’s article. We offered Tang the opportunity to respond to Kerr, as he did to her, but she declined. Instead, her office demanded that we publish corrections to Kerr’s piece.

First, her office said Kerr erred in implying the teachers in the excess pool are just sitting around doing nothing. We added a clarification to the article making clear that teachers in the excess pool do not have a permanent classroom assignment, but are assigned to work in schools in some other capacity. 

Second, Tang’s office said Kerr inaccurately claimed that her predecessor “announced he was retiring and she would be replacing him.” While her predecessor did step down and endorse her, Tang’s office pointed out that he lacked the authority to anoint her.

Finally, Tang’s office said Kerr’s claim that the union president was “selected without anything resembling an election” was false. Tang’s office pointed out that there was an election, although her lone opponent dropped out before a vote was taken.

We added a clarification to Kerr’s piece to make clear that the teachers in the excess pool lack a permanent teaching assignment but don’t sit around doing nothing. We felt the second and third claims made by Tang’s office fell in a gray area. Kerr’s claims about Tang’s election, given that it was an uncontested race, seemed to fall within the editorial license granted to writers of opinion pieces.

We hope this article illuminates the positions of the two sides and we can move on. Our desire is to provide a platform for debate, not to play referee for every claim and counterclaim.

Bruce Mohl oversees the production of content and edits reports, along with carrying out his own reporting with a particular focus on transportation, energy, and climate issues. He previously worked...

3 replies on “Editor’s note: Tang vs. Kerr”

  1. Democrats for Education Reform is a New York based Political Action Committee…a PAC…and CommonWealth owes its readers that substantial fact every single time DFER is mentioned. That would certainly wave a red flag for readers when considering DFER’s OpEd pieces. Besides failing to note DFER’s true nature, Bruce Mohl characterized each commentary very differently. BTU President Jessica Tang wrote “an opinion piece” while DFER’s Mass director Liam Kerr wrote “an article.” An easy way to give more weight to Kerr’s hit piece at the expense of Tang’s thoughtfully written commentary. CommonWealth may be “great believers in open debate” but its editors make sure that debate heavily favors charter schools, DFER and that whole agenda while downplaying to the point of ignoring public education funding. As a reminder, Boston Public School teacher Alycia Steelman’s “Time to update state school funding formula” ended up on CommonWealth’s front page for just a few hours. Usually, anything appearing in CommonWealth is featured for days and days on the main page (Liam Kerr’s piece stayed front and center for at least eleven days) but not when it comes to public education funding. That needs to disappear immediately lest it contribute to a real “open debate.”

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