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This week on CounterSpin: Corporate education reformer Michelle Rhee is hard to avoid these days with news outlets abuzz over the “report cards” she issued thru her group StudentsFirst, grading state education systems, not on the quality of education they give their students, but on how thoroughly they’ve embraced corporate reforms. Rhee was also the subject of a recent Frontline documentary about her days as chancellor of Washington DC schools. We’ll talk with education historian and NYU researcher Diane Ravitch about “The Education of Michelle Rhee.”

Also on CounterSpin today, the Federal Trade Commission has decided not to go forward with an antitrust case against internet giant Google. Some commentary hailed this as a victory for free speech. But what are the bigger, broader questions about Google’s market power—and what it might be doing with it? We’ll ask Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of the book The Googlization of Everything — and Why We Should Worry.

LINKS:

—Diane Ravitch

–“Borking Antitrust: Google Secures Its Monopoly,” by Frank Pasquale and Siva Vaidhyanathan (Dissent, 1/4/13)