Ravitch unloads on school ‘deform’
Diane Ravitch, the education historian who has led a de facto national movement against current education policies — including standardized testing, charter schools, vouchers and teacher evaluations tied to student test scores — said Tuesday evening that “the White House’s obsession with data is sick.”
Ravitch was being feted at the American Federation of Teachers headquarters by the union’s president, Randi Weingarten.
(Michael Buckner/Getty Images) - Diane Ravitch
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The two spent some time on Capitol Hill Tuesday, meeting with lawmakers,including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “She was walking the halls of Congress, not to lobby a bill, but to lobby an ideology on behalf of children,” Weingarten told the gathering.
Asked about the latest reform trend — ideas around the importance of developing character traits like ‘grit’ and ‘determination’ in students to help them succeed academically — Ravitch said she didn’t think those traits in children could or should be measured.
“It makes me want to throw up,” said Ravitch, who is promoting a new book, “The Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.” “The White House’s obsession with data is sick.”
Constant measurement and reducing children to numerical scores are wrong, she told the adoring crowd of union activists and progressives. “My grandchildren are not global competitors — they’re children,” she said.
“I don’t know whether this is a period of