Quotessence
Home / Authors / Diane Ravitch Books
Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch Books

Historian

Related Quotes

“Public education is not broken. It is not failing or declining. The diagnosis is wrong, and the solutions of the corporate reformers are wrong. Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation. But public education is not ‘broken.’ Public education is in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it.”

EducationPovertyBrokenRacismCorporationsWrongSegregationPublic EducationCorporate Greed
Book:Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools
Create image

“The trouble with test-based accountability is that it imposes serious consequences on children, educators, and schools on the basis of scores that may reflect measurement error, statistical error, random variation, or a host of environmental factors or student attributes. None of us would want to be evaluated - with our reputation and livelihood on the line - solely on the basis of an instrument that is prone to error and ambiguity. The tests now in use are not adequate by themselves to the task of gauging the quality of schools or teachers ... they must be used with awareness of their limitations and variability. They were not designed to capture the most important dimensions of education, for which we do not have measures.”

EducationStudentsParentsTestingTeachersSchools
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“The other article was by Lois Weiner, a professor who prepared urban teachers at New Jersey City University. Weiner was a parent activist at P.S. 3 in District 2, which she described as a highly progressive alternative school with an unusual degree of parent involvement. She claims that district administrators were stifling teachers and parents at P.S.3 by mandating "constructivist" materials and specific instructional strategies ... She [Weiner] continued, "The degree of micromanagement is astounding." Those who challenged the district office's mandates, she said, risked getting an unsatisfactory rating or being fired. Weiner contended that "opposition from parents is building against the new math curriculum," which was supposed to be field-tested with control groups, but instead was mandated for every classroom." Teachers were expressly prohibited from using other math textbooks or materials, and some were clandestinely "photocopying pages of now-banned workbooks.”

EducationParentsReformTeachersSchoolsTextbooks
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“But the problem with the marketplaces that it dissolves communities and replaces them with consumers. Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program.”

EducationParentsSchools
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“Perhaps the greatest obstacle to systemic reform was that it required numerous stakeholders - textbook publishers, test publishers, schools of education, and so on - to change, which turned out to be an insurmountable political obstacle.”

EducationStandardsReformTestingTeachersSchoolsTextbooksCurriculumUniversitiesColleges
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“Nor is it wise to entrust our schools to inexperienced teachers, principals, and superintendents. Education is too important to relinquish to the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs. American education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it is threatening to destroy public education. Who will stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?”

EducationPoliticiansTeachersSchoolsTycoonsSuperintendentsPrincipals
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“While I have never been a member of any union, I was a friend of Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, whom I met after my history of the New York City schools was published. His successor, Sandra Feldman, was also my friend, and I am friends with her successor, Randi Weingarten, who was elected AFT president in 2008.”

EducationUnionsTeachers
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“Challenge your self to read what your children are forced to endure, and then ask why we expect that textbooks - written and negotiated line by line to placate politically active interest groups in Texas and California - are up to the task of supplying a first-rate curriculum.”

Textbooks
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“It defies reason to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. would march arm in arm with Wall Street hedge fund managers and members of ALEC to lead a struggle for the privatization of public education, the crippling of unions, and the establishment of for-profit schools.”

PrivatizationDr Martin Luther KingDr Martin Luther King JrAnti UnionFor Profit Schools
Book:Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools
Create image

“The state put a Broad-trained superintendent, Randy Ward, in charge of the Oakland schools ... Ward embraced the small schools but went further; his school reform plan aimed to turn the district into a marketplace of school choice while overhauling the bureaucracy. He closed low-performing schools and opened charter schools. He attracted $26 million in grants from the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Dell Foundation, and corporations based in Oakland.”

EducationReformSchoolsFoundationsSuperintendents
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“I support charters, but the right kind of charters. I support charters that support kids who have the highest needs. A charter should be targeting students who are in serious trouble. It should serve students who didn't succeed in public schools when it can help them. Or, at least, charters should agree to accept similar proportions of the kids with the highest needs.”

NeedsShouldKindHelpingKidsSchoolAcceptingSupportTroubleStudentsSeriousSucceedHighestAgreeProportionPublic SchoolCharter
Author:Diane Ravitch
Create image

“In DC, policymakers think that if we can only have high enough standards, tough enough tests, and hold people accountable, we can close the achievement gap. And it hasn't happened. Yet the new law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, is based on the same test-based and market-driven framework and ideology, except it lets the states do it.”

PeopleIfsThinkingStatesEnoughLawHappenedStudentsSucceedAchievementStandardsToughTestsDrivenIdeologyGapsOld PeopleFrameworkAchievement Gap
Author:Diane Ravitch
Create image

“Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program.”

ShouldWellsChildrenMatterAbleSchoolCoursesParentSoundTeacherProgramEducationalEducatedNeighborhoodShoppingPublic SchoolSuitableWell EducatedEducational Programs
Author:Diane Ravitch
Create image

“Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.”

ChildrenSchoolStrategySubstitutesInstructionTestingClosingEducatorCurriculumGood Education
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“The foundations demand that public schools and teachers be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountability.”

IfsSchoolTeacherPlansFailingDemandPerformancesFoundationPublic SchoolSanctionsSchools And Teachers
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.”

ThinkingShouldStillsIdeasFactsShowsRunningCertainBeliefViewsOpinionDoubtRiskWillingConflictEvidenceErrorsSkepticismRationalityHardened
Author:Diane Ravitch
Create image

“American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?”

MayLongIdeasSchoolAmericaBusinessEducationHistoryWorstPoliticianIllCurrentsObsessionDestroyingThreateningInfatuationFadsPublic EducationAmerican EducationTycoonsSchool Work
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.”

HumansChildrenPlaySchoolResponsibilityVisionRolesDemocracyRightsFailingPossibilitySourceExerciseTasteOur ChildrenMarketingGrantedEmpoweringSchemesEnlighteningRights And Responsibilities
Author:Diane Ravitch
Create image

“Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.”

UnderstandingDecisionActiveOur TimePassiveSpectatorsParticipantsKnowledge And Understanding
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions.”

PeopleRunningPurposeForcePowerfulCommonPolicyInstitutionsFoundationDemocraticAgendasPublic EducationCommon PurposeRelinquishingRelinquishing Control
Book:The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Create image

“If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars?”

IfsSchoolSuccessfulOrganizationPaidManagementDollarsAverageProfitAccomplishedExecutivesPublic SchoolSalaryTaxpayersCharterPublic EducationRationaleCharter Schools
Book:Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools
Create image