Abstract

The Education of Diane Ravitch

The article focuses on the book "Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms," by Diane Ravitch. Among the hundreds of educators, scholars and politicians who've been engaged in educational policy making during the past generation, or the thousands who've written or made speeches about schools, few have the stature that Ravitch now has. In an age when almost everybody has an opinion about schools, Ravitch's name must be somewhere near the top of the Rolodex of every serious education journalist in this country. Call her a moderate conservative on the spectrum of school politics: She served as an Assistant Secretary of Education in the U.S. George Bush administration, but Ravitch is first and foremost an education historian, a teacher and a policy analyst.