Diane Ravitch Visit
Diane Ravitch, author, activist and educational historian, delivered a thought-inducing public talk Monday, October 3 at Page Auditorium on the Duke University campus. Her appearance was presented by Durham Public Schools and the Duke University Program in Education.
Dr. Ravitch offered opinions on standardized testing, teacher evaluations, charter schools, school funding, professional standards, No Child Left Behind and other hot topics. After a one-hour presentation, she entertained questions from the floor.
Prior to the keynote, Dr. Ravitch met with DPS leaders in a small group setting to engage in professional dialog about her vision for schools and the evolution of her beliefs about education.
Dr. Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She is the author of 10 books on education and education reform, most recently last year’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. From 1997 to 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal testing program.
Given Ravitch’s background and involvement with the federal testing program and her advocacy of school choice, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” attracted wide attention for its disavowal of many of her earlier positions. “Dr. Ravitch is one of the most influential education scholars of recent decades, and her turnaround has become the buzz of school policy circles,” Sam Dillon wrote in The New York Times in March 2010.
“On our present course, we are disrupting communities, dumbing down our schools, giving students false reports of their progress, and creating a private sector that will undermine public education without improving it. Most significantly, we are not producing a generation of students who are more knowledgeable, and better prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That is why I changed my mind about the current direction of school reform.”
Check out photos from Diane Ravitch's visit on the DPS facebook page.
A full version of Dr. Ravitch's Speech is available on YouTube.
