Review of An Education: How I Changed My Mind about Schools and Almost Everything Else, by Diane Ravitch

John Thompson earned his PhD in history at Rutgers University. He became an award-winning author, a researcher for the ACLU/OK, and a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood. When the Hoova set of the Crips took over his Oklahoma City neighborhood in the 1980s, Thompson became attached to kids growing up in crack houses and took them hiking and camping and engaged them in community gardening. He became an inner-city high school teacher who played basketball with his students and took them on large numbers of field trips, introducing them to legislators and community and civil rights leaders. His book A Teacher’s Tale: Living, Loving and Listening to Our Kids, told the story how corporate school reform turned his school into the state’s lowest-performing mid-high. He has decades of experience writing about and opposing test-driven, competition-driven accountability. Thompson believes: Listen to your students, and they will teach you how to teach them. When taught the challenging material that affluent schools offer, his students took it as a sign of respect and responded in amazing ways.