Review of Cutting school: Privatization, segregation, and the end of public education

Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. She is the Founder and President of the Network for Public Education (NPE). 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. She was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards.

She is the author of Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2014), The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010), as well as many other widely read works.

She was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education (1979); the Society of American Historians (1984); the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985); and as the Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences (2002). In 2010, the National Education Association selected her as its “Friend of Education” for the year.  She has been awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, by the following institutions: Williams College; Reed College; Amherst College; the State University of New York; Ramapo College; St. Joseph’s College of New York; Siena College; Middlebury College Language Schools; and Union College.

She is currently the most influential voice on the state of public education in America. Her blog, dianeravitch.net, has received more than 30 million hits.