Diane Ravitch Quotes

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

An attack on public education is an attack on democracy.

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.

There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions.

If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars?

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.

Research does not support any part of Race to the Top

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

Testing children until they cry is a bad idea. It is an educational malpractice.

Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions

What is happening to teachers now across this nation is a disgrace. The attacks on them are a blot on our nation. Teachers and students are not different interest groups. Anyone who demeans teachers demeans education and hurts children.

The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.

One of the persistent ironies of reform is the impossibility of predicting the full consequences of change.

We will continue to chase rainbows unless we recognize that they are rainbows and there is no pot of gold at the end of them

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?

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

We should totally ban for-profit charters. For-profit's first obligation is to its stockholders, not to its children.

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.

In DC, policymakers think that if we can only have high enough standards, tough enough tests, and hold people accountable, we can close the achievement gap. And it hasn't happened. Yet the new law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, is based on the same test-based and market-driven framework and ideology, except it lets the states do it.

You can't lead your troops if your troops do not trust you.

When you succeed at keeping almost everyone in school, you must figure out ways to educate everyone you keep in school.

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

Most people believe that schools were good enough when they were children and that they are good enough now. But the dynamic growth of our system of education has spawned serious problems of educational quality.

The ladder was there, from the gutter to the university, and for those stalwart enough to ascend it, the schools were a boon and a path out of poverty.

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

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.

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

I support charters, but the right kind of charters. I support charters that support kids who have the highest needs. A charter should be targeting students who are in serious trouble. It should serve students who didn't succeed in public schools when it can help them. Or, at least, charters should agree to accept similar proportions of the kids with the highest needs.

The foundations demand that public schools and teachers be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountability.

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.