St. Pete TImes: Educator and author Diane Ravitch battles the system she helped to build
“I had the honor of being at Dr. Ravitch’s speech this week at the FSBA. She was amazing!” ~Thomas
Educator and author Diane Ravitch battles the system she helped to build
By Tom Marshall, Times Staff Writer, In Print: Thursday, June 9, 2011
Diane Ravitch has never been one to mince words.
Twenty years ago, she was an outspoken advocate for more standardized testing, more accountability, less fluff in the classroom. As an assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, she helped launch the back-to-basics movement.
These days her language is still fiery. But Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, now aims her ire at a different target: all those ideas she used to champion.
“Particularly in Florida, it’s a disaster,” she said during a visit Wednesday with the St. Petersburg Times editorial board. “What we are doing is killing creativity, originality, divergent thinking. All the things we need in the 21st century are what we’re squeezing out of a generation of children.”
In a speech today at the Florida School Boards Association annual meeting in Tampa, Ravitch plans to continue her full-throated campaign to “save public education” from its obsession with testing.
“This is institutionalized fraud,” she said, referring to the phenomenon of ever-rising scores. “Because we are graduating just as many kids who can’t read as we did 10 years ago.”
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