The Anti-School-Reform Canon
A barrage of new books attacking school reform are being published this year.
Sounding notes sure to be heard repeatedly this fall, David Kirp, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, on Wednesday penned a piece for Slate, in which he argued that Ravitch and other authors of new books “decimate” the case for school choice and accountability. In his piece, Kirp name-checks first Chris Lubienski and Sarah Lubienski, who, in The Public School Advantage, use data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to argue that public-school students outperform private-school students. Kirp also mentions a new volume by University of Michigan professor David Cohen and coauthors, who in Improvement by Design argue that some really lousy schools have found ways to get better over
