Ravitch to Obama: 'Change course before it is too late"
Education historian Diane Ravitch has been talking with thousands of people as she crisscrosses the country talking about education reform and her New York Times best-selling book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.”
I have written a lot about Ravitch recently because I think she occupies a unique place in the world of education. For years, she was part of the conservative wing of the education world, serving as an assistant secretary in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, and becoming a vocal backer of the second President Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative.
But after looking at the data -- one of the mantras of today’s misguided education leaders -- Ravitch reversed her position on NCLB, calling it a failure. And she has become a strong critic of using business principles to run public school districts.
It is the rarest of education book that makes the best seller list, but Ravitch’s reads like a scary novel with a plot that drives you to keep turning the page. It would be a great thriller -- if it weren’t true.
I conducted an email interview with Ravitch to get an update on what
It’s gotten to the point where I shudder every time I hear people with plans to “increase student achievement” or “improve schools” because whenever I dig more deeply into what those phrases mean it always comes down to one thing: improving standardized test scores. And the reasons are clear: they’re easy to give and to make sense of, they provide our competitive society with some way to rank what’s happening with schools and students, and because we’ve build a billion dollar industry on making sure every kid learns the same thing in the same way on the same day so he or she can pass the test.
