Obama continues Bush's attack on education
June 12, 2010 8:20 am CDT
Ravitch was assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush and a board member of various right-wing think tanks, who has now become a leading critic of the market-based school "reform" that has been embraced by both Democrats and Republicans. Ravitch is "still looking" for an elected official to take a stand against these changes, but opposition is more likely to come from below. One encouraging piece of news is the landslide victory this week of the Caucus Of Rank-and-file Educators in theelection for the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union. --PG
Obama's Right-Wing School Reform
Source: New York Review of Books Blog
Diane Ravitch
June 10, 2010 3 p.m.
Recently, I wrote a book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, in which I took issue with a number of currently popular education strategies that I had once supported, and now, seeing their questionable outcomes, challenge. Since then, I have been traveling across the country and have made three dozen speeches. What started out as a conventional book tour—with stops only in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—turned into something else: a whistle-stop campaign to warn against some of the education “reforms” currently in vogue. From the day that the news broke that I had turned against No Child Left Behind—the federal law that nationally enforces a heavy emphasis on testing and accountability—and that I’d come out against against market-based ideas of school choice, I have been overwhelmed with invitations to speak in almost every state.
The result has been exhilarating, exhausting, and ultimately disheartening. The exhilarating part was meeting thousands of teachers and hearing their appreciation for my support of their work. Teachers repeatedly asked if I could voice their opposition to what is now called reform. Many described the challenges they face trying to comply with the unrealistic goals of No Child Left Behind. At Stanford, a