Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris
I recently published a post by Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris titled “Why It Matters Who Governs America’s Public Schools,” which took issue with some parts of a new report — “The Tapestry of American Public Education: How Can We Create a System of Schools Worth Choosing for All?” — released by a California think tank founded by education expert Linda Darling-Hammond. This post is a response from Darling-Hammond and colleagues to that piece.
Ravitch, Darling-Hammond and Burris are three of the most prominent voices in the national education debate about how to create equitable schools in this country and more often than not agree with one another. This piece and the earlier one reveal a split in the way they view school choice.
Ravitch, a former U.S. assistant secretary of education, is an education historian and advocate who for years was seen as the titular leader of the grass-roots movement against corporate school reform. Burris is a former award-winning high school principal in New York. Both women are leaders of the nonprofit advocacy group the Network for Public Education.
Ravitch and Burris oppose the expansion of alternatives to publicly funded and publicly operated schools and districts, including charter schools, which are privately operated but funded with taxpayer dollars. Their piece criticized the new report for, among other things, failing to take a strong stand on the expansion of charter schools.
Darling-Hammond, an expert on teacher preparation and equity, founded the Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University, where she is professor emeritus, and is founder and president of the California-based Learning Policy Institute. The nonprofit think tank was created to conduct independent, high-quality research to improve education policy and practice, and it was the institute that released the report.
As the post below explains, the report looks at the issue of school choice in a different way than many of the debates on the subject, and in contrast to Ravitch and Burris. You can read their piece here.
School choice is a means, not an end — and a useful one only if it results in greater quality and access for all students
By Linda Darling-Hammond, Peter Cookson, Bob Rothman and Patrick Shields
Last week, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) released a report, “The Tapestry of American Public Education: How Can We Create a System of Schools Worth Choosing for All?” that takes up the issues of choice in public education from a different perspective from the one that has been driving debates since the election of President Trump.
Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have made “choice” their central education policy — defining it primarily as vouchers and tax credits for private schools and funding for charter schools, which include for-profit as well as nonprofit entities. DeVos has actually been a shareholder in K12 Inc., one of the largest for- Continue reading: Linda Darling-Hammond vs. Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris - The Washington Post