McGraw-Hill/Polacco updates...

On Saturday, the New York Times had an article about the mini-imbroglio.

Again, it's still not exactly clear if Ms. Polacco simply told McGraw-Hill that she would speak about NCLB out of some spontaneous feeling that she needed to let them know OR because, as she said in her letter, she was asked to have her speech approved. It would be nice to clear that up with firm statements from Ms. Polacco or SRA.

The Times article mentions bloggers talking about this topic but doesn't mention SRA/McGraw-Hill's decision to come to the blog level to post their statement. You always take a risk when you try to play in an area where you might not understand how the "rules" really work. Just like going into Wrigley and saying "hey, it's really dumb to throw that other guy's home run ball back on the field," I think McGraw-Hill's strategy was inherently risky. Yes, they did clearly point out that Ms. Polacco either did know or realllllllly shoulda known exactly who hired her, but they didn't settle the issue of why they had the right to look at her speech. And their attempt at spin has been pretty well recognized in all the other blogs I've peaked at... and has probably done more on the downside than the upside due to that. Certainly with this blogger it's caused more posts on the subject than would otherwise have existed. Was that the SRA/McGraw-Hill intent?

Certainly, SRA/McGraw-Hill has no obligation to respond to the questions I've asked them here on the blog. It would give them far more credibility if they did reply in some fashion, but I suspect that they didn't give a lot of thought to how blogging and the Net work: they simply wanted to get that statement out. I'd be shocked to be told there haven't been visitors from McGraw-Hill and their Ohio connections to this blog since I asked my questions... but again, they have no obligation to respond.

Interesting times in the blogosphere....