While we’re still on the subject of the billionaire boyz attack on Dr. Ravitch, there is a post by a teacher, Martha Infante, that is a great read.

Here is an excerpt regarding a statement that was made by Arne Duncan about Diane Ravitch.

It would not be the first time that Mr. Duncan spoke off the cuff and showed the public a brief look into the true machinations of his corporate mind.  This is the same secretary that believed Hurricane Katrina was the “best thing to ever happen to New Orleans schools.”  Now Arne Duncan feels he can disparage the foremost expert on education history, using a personal attack to distract from the facts she brought to light.

Not a good move, Mr. Duncan.

You see, while trash-talking may be an effective method in the NBA, in academia it is perceived as a simple vehicle to distract from the debate at hand.  We the teachers, the academics, see through this.  Classroom teachers especially have fine-tuned their BS detection skills with years of experience working with adolescents.  Dr. Ravitch pointed out what few journalists have dared write about: how the schools hailed as miracles by the President and Arne Duncan have high attrition rates that render any assertion of celestial occurrences moot.

See the full post, Not Insulted, on the blog InterACT.

Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Alter will go toe to toe tomorrow, Wednesday, June 8th at 7:00 AM Denver time, that would make it 6:00 AM in Seattle and 9:00 AM in New York, on 760 AM, Dave Sirota’s radio program. A podcast should be available for all who can not listen during the live airing of the show.

Another interesting tidbit came through my inbox this morning with some great links. It’s an article in the Seattle PI Gregoire, Microsoft and Boeing “Transform” Higher Education. It’s basically regarding the chutzpah that Boeing and Microsoft have being at a bill signing that will allow Washington state colleges to set their own tuition rates thanks to the fact that the state is not able to subsidize the education of students in this state and that is in part due to the fact that Boeing, who according to he Daily Beast made a pre-tax profit of $4.5 billion in 2010 and paid 0.3% of its’ pre-tax income in federal taxes, and Microsoft, who made $25 billion in pre-tax income in 2010 but shifts the majority of that income to foreign countries to avoid paying taxes, don’t pay their fair share of taxes.  Also in the state of Washington we do not pay income tax. There was a proposal to require that folks over a certain income pay state income tax but that was shot down by gee, who could that have been? But both companies wanted to be represented as heroes at this bill signing. With friends like these who needs enemies?

Dora