Howler from Ravitch
I couldn't be more pleased that the unions and their lackeys like Ravitch are shooting at us – it's a wonderful sign that we've arrived – but they need to get their facts straight. Ravitch's letter to her fellow wrong-headed academic, Deborah Meier, contains one of the greatest all-time howlers: that the debate over education reform is an unfair fight between "an all-star list of billionaires" and poor, impoverished teachers. HA HA HA HA HA!!! I was rolling on the ground laughing when I read this:
"But something about this scenario is troubling. I guess it is the fundamental unfairness of a fight in which one side has an all-star list of billionaires (and mere multi-millionaires), and the other side has parents and teachers whose resources are meager. Granted, the teachers' unions have some independent resources, but what they have to spend politically to defend public education is peanuts compared with what the billionaires spend to privatize public schools."
My friend Michael Tobman, who lobbies for ed reform in NY, did a nice job rebutting this total nonsense:
Ravitch's comments above provoked an outburst of strong language that startled my staff and associates…
As a regular in Albany and City Hall, the suggestion that our team is competing against interests with limited resources or diminishing influence is simply preposterous and factually inaccurate. It is also disingenuous to assume that the interests of parents and teachers are uniformly aligned.
Our practical reform agenda is opposed by interests so entrenched, they actually believe that a hearing of any positions other than their own reflects a marginal perspective being advanced by sinister forces. The truth lies closer in saying that the very air legislators have been breathing – for decades – has been filtered through UFT and NYSUT offices. We pull back the drapes and open the windows.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 9:53 AM
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