Friday, August 17, 2012

UPDATE: CNN Interview Airs Saturday @8:40 am EST« Diane Ravitch's blog

My Interview on CNN « Diane Ravitch's blog:


CNN Interview Airs Saturday @8:40 am EST

Just got airtime.
CNN interview on Newsroom tomorrow at 8:40 AM EST


Who Should Be Held Accountable?

A reader–a parent and teacher–writes.
Does she refer to the way that education policy is made by non-educators? Or to the reduction of education to data? Or the reduction of children to data points on a graph? Or the indifference to the developmental needs of children and adolescents? Or to the arrival of greedy for-profits into managing schools? Or the galloping 


Who Should Control the Standards?

A reader asks an important question:
Born on the cusp of the New Math, where I first got catechized in the Old Math and then had to learn the New Math in order to help my succeeding siblings through their homework, I am the survivor of more national curriculum reforms than either fashion of Math taught me to count.
But the one thing that distinguished all those Old Style reforms was the question of who was in charge of reforming the curriculum.  No matter how much textbook publishers may have had their hands in the till and their 

My Interview on CNN

I taped the interview a few minutes ago.
It airs tomorrow at 9-10 am EST.
It was a gotcha session.
This is the letter I sent to my contact at CNN.

This was one of the most biased interviews I have ever done, and I have done many. 
Randi Kaye asked me about NAEP scale scores, which was technically a very dumb question, and I was stunned. 

She thinks that a scale score of 250 on a 500 point scale is a failing grade, but a scale score is not a grade at all. 

It’s a trend line.

She asserted that the scale scores are a failing grade for the nation.

That is like saying that someone who scores a 600 on the SAT is a C student, because it is only 75% of 800. But that’s wrong. 

The scale is a technical measure. It is not a grade, period.

Then she asked me about an issue in Michigan, which fortunately, I had written about. But it was clear she was trying to blindside me. 

The point of her question was to blame teachers, and I refused to be pushed into her trap.

Then she read two hostile comments about my CNN post and asked for my response.

Was that supposed to be a balanced or fair interview? 

There was no effort to elicit my views, only a determination to prove me wrong and to assert that US education is terrible.

Shame on CNN.


CNN: please watch

Dear friends,
Watch the program. Reach your own judgment.
Do not react or complain until you have seen the segment, about 5 minutes.
Watch, listen, think.
Diane