Diane Ravitch

The Dark History of School Choice

How an argument for segregated schools became a rallying cry for privatizing public education.

How Trump Politicized Schools Reopening

One of the most difficult issues of the pandemic is when and how schools should reopen. And the situation is made even more challenging because the Trump administration has politicized decision-making and even the CDC itself.

Big Money Rules

Why do people who are poor vote for politicians who promise to cut corporate taxes?

Trump vs. Education

Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos’s proposed budget for the US Department of Education reflects their deep hostility to public education and their desire to shrink the Department of Education, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of it entirely.

When Public Goes Private, as Trump Wants: What Happens?

No high-performing nation in the world has privatized its schools.

Solving the Mystery of the Schools

Education reform today is like Dr. Seuss’s ‘Yertle the Turtle’

Our Unequal Schools

Federal education law originally had one overriding purpose: to send federal funding to schools that enrolled large numbers of poor children.

‘Good Faith & the Schools’

The Myth of Chinese Super Schools

Yong Zhao’s ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?’

Making Schools Poor

Last week’s court ruling striking down job protections for California teachers does nothing to help schools in a state that now ranks at the very bottom in per-pupil spending on education.

The Roar of the Charters

How did a privately managed school franchise that serves a tiny portion of New York City students manage to hijack the education reforms of a new mayor with a huge popular mandate?

Holding Education Hostage

For weeks, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers have been battling over the issue of teacher evaluation, potentially costing the city schools hundreds of millions of dollars. Why does Commissioner King intend to punish the city’s children if the grown-ups don’t agree?

Chicago's Schools

According to most news reports, the teachers in Chicago are striking because they are lazy and greedy. Or they are striking because of a personality clash between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and union president Karen Lewis. Or because this is the last gasp of a dying union movement. Or because Emanuel wants a longer school day, and the teachers oppose it. None of this is true.

In Mitt Romney’s Schoolroom

Education and ‘National Security’: An Exchange

The Miseducation of Mitt Romney

On May 23, the Romney campaign released its education policy white paper titled “A Chance for Every Child: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Restoring the Promise of American Education.” If you liked the George W. Bush administration’s education reforms, you will love the Romney plan. If you think that turning the schools over to the private sector will solve their problems, then his plan will thrill you.

Do Our Public Schools Threaten National Security?

Flunking Arne Duncan

Given Arne Duncan’s enthusiasm for grading educators, it seems high time to evaluate his own performance as Secretary of Education.

How, and How Not, to Improve the Schools

Is Teach for America the solution to the nation’s education problems?

No Student Left Untested

New York’s education officials are obsessed with test scores. In order to secure $700 million of promised funding from Obama’s Race to the Top program, the state wants to find and fire the teachers who aren’t able to produce higher test scores year after year. But most testing experts believe that the methods for rating teachers are inaccurate, unstable, and unreliable. New York’s hurried and wrong-headed teacher evaluation plan will profoundly demoralize teachers, as they realize that they have lost their professional autonomy and will be measured according to precise behaviors and actions that have nothing to do with their own definition of good teaching.