Get me a rewrite!

Where is the editor? I kept asking that question as I read a Washington Post article headlined "D.C. Schools Could Cut 395 Staff Positions." The first question that seemed not to have been asked of the author was: Is there any effort being made to distinguish between the good teachers and bureaucrats and the bad ones? In other words, will the cut target the fight people?

The article says that the cuts are necessary to pay for a teacher pay raise and "step increases that teachers will be owed" I doubt that readers who are not bureaucrats themselves will know--and the article does not explain--that step increases are also pay increases, supposedly based on merit but in the federal civil service granted almost automatically to 99 percent of those eligible. Are the D.C. step increases also given without regard to merit? And is the other pay raise similarly unrelated to performance?

The article quotes George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers' Union, as saying that "it would be difficult to justify [the cuts] ... when the city has a surplus" The city's Treasury is unusually flush at the moment, so the issue Parker raises is a legitimate one. But the article does not deal with it.

I'm sure there were excuses for these issues not being raised by an editor. The reporter may have been on a tight deadline, for example. But there is no excuse for the fact that at most newspapers, most of the time, not nearly enough of these sorts of questions are raised by the editors.

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