What if Diane Ravitch were U.S. education secretary?
Soon we’ll know. The election is next week, and not too long after we know who who, a new Cabinet will start to be formed. We can speculate on who will ultimately be the next U.S. education secretary, but let’s pursue another thought experiment. Author C.M. Rubin has asked six people prominent in the world of education what they would do if they were named U.S. secretary of education, and this is one post in her interview series.
The first interview was with Andy Hargreaves, author and Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. The second was with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the country. The third was with Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and creator of the famous theory of multiple intelligences. She also interviewed Charles Fadel, author, inventor and the founder and chairman of the Center for Curriculum Redesign; Julia Freeland Fisher, author and director of education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute; and Diane Ravitch, the subject of the following post.
C.M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three best-selling books, including “The Real Alice in Wonderland,” as well as the publisher of CMRubinWorld, which launched in 2010 to explore what kind of education students need in a rapidly changing world. She is also a Disruptor Foundation Fellow. You can follow her on Twitter: @cmrubinwor This first appeared on Huffington Post and I was given permission to republish it.
Ravitch is a well-known and controversial figure in the education world. She was a former assistant secretary of education and counselor to then Education Secretary Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush who was a big supporter of No Child Left Behind — until she wasn’t. Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University and a best-selling education historian, published a book in 2010 called “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” that explained why she changed her mind about standardized test-based school reform and No Child Left Behind. She became the titular leader of a movement among parents, educators, students and others to oppose the administration’s reform policies, and a few years ago co-founded a public education advocacy group called the Network for Public Education.
Here’s the interview by C.W. Rubin:
Q) Diane, what will be the legacy of Race to the Top and President Obama’s other education initiatives?
A) In years to come, when historians look back on the early twenty-first century, they are likely to refer to the “Bush-Obama policies,” because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the What if Diane Ravitch were U.S. education secretary? - The Washington Post:
