‘Slaying Goliath’: Diane Ravitch argues in new book that public education advocates have beat back efforts to privatize schools - The Washington Post

‘Slaying Goliath’: Diane Ravitch argues in new book that public education advocates have beat back efforts to privatize schools - The Washington Post

Q&A: In ‘Slaying Goliath,’ Diane Ravitch argues public education advocates have beat back privatization efforts

Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch is publishing a new book Tuesday, the latest in her years-long chronicling of how the modern school “reform” movement has harmed students, teachers and schools.

A decade after her blockbuster book on the disastrous effects of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, Ravitch’s new book, “Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools,” tells the continuing story of the reform push during the Obama and Trump presidencies.

Ravitch focuses on what she calls the “failures of Corporate Disruption” of public education ti changes aimed at operating schools as if they are businesses — and introduces readers to students, teachers, parents and others who have fought high-stakes tests and the privatization of public schools. She says that corporate-informed school reform efforts are actually dead, even if their supporters don’t quite realize it yet.

“Slaying Goliath” is a bookend of sorts to 2010’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” which was a sensation in the education world. Before publishing that book, Ravitch had been assistant secretary of research and improvement in the Education Department under President George H.W. Bush and was an early supporter of No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of President George W. Bush, which ushered in the high-stakes standardized-testing movement.

But when she researched the effects of the measures, she saw that NCLB’s testing requirements had turned classrooms into test prep factories and driven schools to narrow the curriculum to focus on tested subjects. She wrote “Death and Life” to explain why she no longer believed in what she called “corporate school reform.”

The 2010 book helped start a movement among parents, educators, students, advocates and others, and she became the titular leader of it. Ravitch wrote or co-wrote a few other books over the next decade, including “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.” She also co-founded and leads the nonprofit Network for Public Education, which links people and groups that advocate to improve public schools. CONTINUE READING: ‘Slaying Goliath’: Diane Ravitch argues in new book that public education advocates have beat back efforts to privatize schools - The Washington Post