Diane Ravitch in Savannah: Don’t let reformers and politicians destroy public schools
SAVANNAH: At the summer conference of the Georgia School Boards Association this morning in this port city, noted education researcher Diane Ravitch lambasted most of the reforms du jour in education today, merit pay, value-added teacher evaluations, charter schools, vouchers and testing.
She cautioned the 600 attendees to look critically at reforms being led by the high tech sector and hedge fund managers “who don’t much about public schools. They don’t much about education and, sometimes, I think they don’t know much about children.”
The competitive model that they are pushing will not work because the goal of education is not to produce winners and losers, Ravitch said, but to give “every child our best effort.”
She urged the school board members to “Stand up for public education. Don’t let private entrepreneurs divide your community and turn your schools into profit centers. Don’t stand by and let politicians tear down a public institution that has been the foundation of our democracy for 150 years.”
Reminding the audience that 93 percent of Georgia’s students attend public schools, Ravitch