It's not often you see someone change their mind as publicly as Diane Ravitch has. The former Assistant Secretary of Education was an advocate for No Child Left Behind, merit pay, standardized testing, etc. Now she has repudiated many of her previous opinions in her new book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."
We talked today on KTRS/St. Louis about what changed her view on these issues, Why testing is an unreliable way to measure the quality of teachers, why she's opposed to charter schools, and why she supports a national curriculum. We also discussed the impact of the narrow-minded Texas Board Of Education on students in the other 49 states because, as one of the country's top purchasers of textbooks, their educational decisions are reflected in what publishers put in those books.
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Here's another fascinating conversation I had with Ravitch in 2003 about her book, "The Language Police."