Q&A with Diane Ravitch on N.J. school reform
Published: Sunday, November 13, 2011, 10:25 AM
Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. In addition, she is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University, says people like Chris Christie and Barack Obama are wrecking American schools. A leading thinker on education reform for a generation, she believes the bipartisan consensus around school reform is all wrong.
She discussed her views with editorial page editor Tom Moran at the New Jersey Education Association convention in Atlantic City last week.
Q. Tell us first about your changing views. As a senior official in the first Bush administration, you were big fan of charter schools and testing, and now you are a skeptic. What happened?
A. At the time I support those ideas, they hadn’t been tried. Now I see, because it’s been applied across the board, that there are all kinds of negative consequences. I hadn’t thought of the possibility that the stakes would get so high people would