Unlikely bedfellows at education speech tonight
Rice University might want to set up a wrestling ring for an on-campus lecture tonight. Diane Ravitch, a New York University education professor who has flip-flopped her views on the public school reform movement, is speaking at 7 p.m. today in a lecture series sponsored by Teach for America and the KIPP charter network — two entities she doesn't support.
 Ravitch |
Ravitch, a native Houstonian, worked as an assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush and was a strong proponent of the mandatory testing put in place by the second President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. But these days, Ravitch has a new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, in which she rejects the concepts she used to laud.
Don't worry — Ravitch is aware of the sponsors of her speech, said Andrea Hodge, the director of the Rice Education Entrepreneurship