Check out this story. It’s about a school superintendent in Rhode Island who fired all of a high school’s teachers en masse because the teacher union refused to work 25 minutes more per day to help improve a failing school.
The story quotes students and parents who say they love their teachers, and several attest to their dedication to students. Apparently that dedication doesn’t extend an additional 25 minutes. The story is heavily weighted toward the teachers, with parents saying it’s students’ fault, not teachers, that the school is failing. The superintendent has no support in the story other than her own.
In the blog world, however, several key pieces of information are added to the story. For instance, the fact that the teachers average salary is between $70,000 and $78,000 in a community where the median income is $22,000, that Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and that public sentiment seems to be on the side of the superintendent.
The lesson here: Read your local MSM news sources but augment them with others to get a full picture.
