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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Interesting days indeed

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Interesting days indeed

Interesting days indeed

Diane Ravitch calls them, "an interesting few days." Indeed they were. They began on the last day of May with her NYT op-ed piece which nailed the corporate school reformers for their politically-driven, data-fudging "turnaround" myth-making.

Then came the pitiful response from Arne Duncan via embedded Bloomberg journalist Jonathan Alter which basically amounted to a paragraph or two of personal invective aimed at Diane.
"She’s the education world’s very own Whittaker Chambers, the famous communist turned strident anti-communist of the 1940s."
"Diane Ravitch is in denial and she is insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country who are proving her wrong every day." (Fawning Alter quoting "mild-mannered" education secretary Duncan).
And my favorite: "She now uses phony empiricism."
This, the day after she received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan award from the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences for promoting "the use of informed judgment to advance the public good" through "sound