Quotes from Diane Ravitch

statistician William Sanders in Tennessee, who began his career advising agricultural and manufacturing industries. Sanders claimed that his statistical modeling could determine how much "value" a teacher added to her students' testing performance.

Thus, those who now sharply criticize the public schools speak fondly of an era when most schools were racially segregated; when public schools were not required to accept children with physical, mental, and emotional handicaps; when there were relatively few students who did not speak or read English; and when few graduated from high school and went to college.

By comparing prior test scores, Sanders reasoned that the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of that student became unimportant. In effect, Sanders treated student learning as a finite quantity, with the teacher as the variable.

Do we need neighborhood public schools? I believe we do ... For more than a century, they have been an essential element of our democratic institutions. We abandon them at our peril.

American education has been littered with failed fads and foolish ideas for the past century.

Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?

Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions

Those who can't teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers.

Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.

Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department

Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?

Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.

Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.

Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.

Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program.

American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?

One problem with test-based accountability, as currently defined and used, is that it removes all responsibility from students and their families for the students' academic performance. NCLB neglected to acknowledge that students share in the responsibility for their academic performance and that they are merely passive recipients of their teachers' influence.

What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.

The person who knows 'how' will always have a job. The person who knows 'why' will always be his boss.

Public education is not broken. It is not failing or declining. The diagnosis is wrong, and the solutions of the corporate reformers are wrong. Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation. But public education is not 'broken.' Public education is in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it.

Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.

Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.

What matters most is for the school, the district, and the state to be able to say that more students have reached proficiency. This sort of fraud ignores the students' interests while promoting the interests of adults who take credit for nonexistent improvements.