What Diane Ravitch has learned in her decades on both sides of the school reform fights

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For much of the last several decades, Diane Ravitch has had the ear of powerful people.

As a college student at Wellesley in 1958 Diane Ravitch spent two hours in a class seminar talking with then-Sen. John F. Kennedy before later working on his campaign for president. A few decades later, after she had become a conservative intellectual — championing academic standards, testing, and school choice, while opposing busing for integration — presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan sought her advice. She stayed in the Arkansas governor’s mansion with Bill and Hillary Clinton and then served in the George H. W. Bush administration.

A longtime New York City resident, Ravitch declined an offer from then Mayor Rudy Giuliani to run the city’s schools, she says. Later she entertained the next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, in her home, before turning against his education policies. 

These days, Ravitch is most known for her stunning intellectual transformation, declared in a best-selling 2010 book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” She launched a widely read blog, where she lambasted the policies she once supported and, in some cases, the people who still supported them. “I dedicated myself to the singular mission of revealing the well-funded cabal that seeks to privatize the funding of education,” she writes.

For a spell, it seemed like Ravitch was winning. As the bipartisan school reform consensus in favor of charter schools and test-based accountability collapsed, she published a triumphant book in early 2020 called “Slaying Goliath.” 

Now Ravitch is out with a memoir: “An Education.” She describes the tribulations and twists of her personal life, including losing a young son to leukemia and leaving her husband in 1985 to partner with a woman, now her wife. She also writes about her intellectual journey, a reminder she says to always keep open the possibility that you’re wrong.

Ravitch, 87, is confident that her current views on schools are right, and she still publishes frequently on her blog making that case. But since the pandemic, the politics of education have shifted away from her side of the debate. Most Republican-led states have begun providing public subsidies to private schools. Soon the federal government will do the same. If her 2020 book was a declaration of victory, “An Education” ends with something of a lament. “The struggle to save our public schools goes on,” Ravitch writes.

I wanted to speak to Ravitch about her career and life, the state of American schools, and whether public education and private school vouchers can coexist. 

Our interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

Was there anything you learned in the process of writing the book?

I didn't want it to be just a jumble of memories. I felt that the unifying thread, if there is one, is about finding yourself, discovering that you can't be anybody else other than yourself. That was what hit me when I was making the decision that I couldn't any longer be part of the world that I was really deeply embedded in — I just can't do this. I mean, I don't believe it. I think they're wrong. 

You quote an educator who says, “We have to learn to live with those whose opinions differ from our own. After all, they may turn out to be right.” Do you think people you disagree with now could turn out to be right?

Well, I've thought about that, that maybe I'm wrong. I guess the only virtue of that for me is that I've been on both sides, and it's why my 2010 book had so much resonance, because I had been on the other side.

Have you changed your mind about anything in the last 10 years?

Well, if anything, I've come to feel more strongly about why we should use testing differently. I'm not saying abandon testing, simply that I think it’s misused.

Does it concern you, the recent declines we've seen in national test scores?

Not really, because fundamentally, I think that the tests tell us something, but they're misused. So I'm not saying that tests are totally worthless, but that when you make them the most important thing in schooling, it devalues everything else.

We've seen scores go up and we've seen scores go down, and I think that looking overall, we've seen progress. 

Certainly, in some respects, your side of the education argument is losing. Why do you think that is?

Well, I don't think it's because of public demand. For example, the spread of vouchers, which has been amazing — I look at states where vouchers were turned down overwhelmingly. Like Arizona, they had the last referendum, and it went 65-35 against vouchers, and then the legislature went ahead and passed vouchers. So why is it happening? It's happening because there's a lot of money making it happen.

There are some studies that show that public schools up their game in response to competition from vouchers.

I’m unimpressed by that. Again, it's only based on test scores. They can't up their game by having more kids who are playing in a band or an orchestra or a jazz group. They can't up their game by having more kids who love school. 

Why shouldn't low-income parents have that option for private school if their kid is in a public school that isn't working for them?

There's lots of choice in public schools today. You can go to a different public school. If you look at the evidence, it seems to hurt when kids take vouchers.

That's true on tests, though the evidence on the non-test outcomes, including high school graduation and college enrollment, leans a little more positive for vouchers.

Yeah, but you know, I learned about college enrollment that it's a fairly useless measure because there are so many colleges where anyone can get in. 

I want to ask about the “science of reading” movement. You say that you don't think there should be mandates on teachers to use certain curriculum or techniques. Why not? 

Well, I don't believe in legislative mandates because the people who write the mandates usually know absolutely nothing about education. I believe in phonics, but I don't believe that phonics is the only thing. 

There are no panaceas. This has been, I guess, the one theme of all my writing. The book “Left Back,” which was the history of the 20th century, was basically a review of all the fads. Everybody has a great idea, and then that great idea dies. And then somebody else has a great idea, and that idea dies. 

Some have said that you have the zeal of a convert. Do you think that's right? 

Well, I don't think it's right. I tend to think of it as I've seen the light. What I try to do is think of real children, whether it's my grandchildren or somebody else's children. Is this something that will make them better people? Is this something that will make them excited about learning? 

I've made a point of never telling teachers how to teach because I'm not a teacher. What many people in my policy area do is we look at the data and we look at the studies. We're not looking at the people who have the stress of teaching and parenting. I've tried to be more humble — whether it comes across or not, I don't know — but I acknowledge my own fallibility as an expert. I believe in expertise, but I also believe that it matters to try to see things from the ground up and not from 20,000 feet.

[Soon after our conversation Ravitch sent me a follow up note, which read in part:] 

I have been reflecting for a whole five minutes about “the zeal of a convert.” 

I am zealous, but it’s not because I am a “convert.” I’m zealous because I feel I have to make up for the part I played in encouraging bad ideas: treating children and teachers like widgets; promoting privatization; supporting standardized testing. I was in the thick of it, and I was wrong. I am trying now to right the wrongs that I encouraged and was part of.

Reach me at [email protected].