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Jeff Bernstein

Thoughts On History, Ideology, and Kevin Carey's Profile of Diane Ravitch - Dana Goldstein - 0 views

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    The New Republic has published a provocative profile of Diane Ravitch by my friend Kevin Carey, and it serves as a useful companion to the profile of Ravitch I wrote in June. Kevin, who works for the standards and accountability think tank Education Sector, is unsurprisingly more harshly critical of Ravitch than I was. He focuses a great deal of attention on her shortcomings as a historian, and while I think it's fair to point out that an ideological, polemical writing style has colored all of Ravitch's work, it's also the case that many celebrated, serious historians have held ideological worldviews, from Charles Beard to David Hofstadter to the Schlesingers. Gordon Wood's The Idea of America contains a lot of interesting thinking on the contributions and limitations of history colored by contemporary political concerns, and I think Ravitch's style follows the politically-engaged example set by the progressive historians in particular.
Jeff Bernstein

Eduwonk » Blog Archive » Second Response From Diane Ravitch - 0 views

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    All week Eric Hanushek and Diane Ravitch have discussed and debated the pros and cons of more assertive policies to deselect the lowest-performing teachers.  Hanushek started on Monday, Ravitch responded on Tuesday, again Hanushek on Wednesday, and here is Ravitch with the final installment today.  Many thanks to both of them for this discussion.
Jeff Bernstein

As Cuomo declares victory on a teacher-testing agreement, Ravitch says it's a 'dark day... - 0 views

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    Appearing with union officials in the Capitol, Governor Andrew Cuomo called the agreement "a victory for all New York State." Diane Ravitch, an education expert and professor at New York University, doesn't like the deal at all. Under the deal, 60 percent of a teacher's evaluation will be based on subjective classroom observations by the principal or other school officials, and up to 40 percent will be based on student scores on statewide standardized tests. In an email to me, Ravitch said, "40% is too much, in my view" and "evaluations should be conducted by experienced professionals." She said the plan could result in unfairly low evaluation scores for teachers dealing with students who are not prepared for standardized tests (for example, students with learning disabilities and those who are not proficient in English).
Jeff Bernstein

John Thompson: Diane Ravitch and the History That "Reformers" Do Not Know - 0 views

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    Diane Ravitch has again done the seemingly impossible. She prompted Education Sector's Kevin Carey to take a glance at the history of education. Even so, Carey's piece in The New Republic, "The Dissenter," indicates that he did not read carefully. Carey wrote that Ravitch "left a polarized history profession in her wake," as if she did not enter the field at a time when traditional historians were under siege. During the sixties, history was dominated by class-based analyses of theories on the oppressiveness of various power structures. History was dominated by genres, ranging from the New Social History to the various Marxist schools of thought, that sought evidence for or against ideological orthodoxies. Too many fell under the umbrella of "history with the people left out."
Jeff Bernstein

Ravitch updates best-selling book on ed reform - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post - 0 views

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    Critics of Diane Ravitch like to say that the education historian talks a lot about what is wrong with the modern school reform movement but doesn't offer solutions about how to fix anything. Historians, of course, by definition spend their time looking to the past, not making policy pronouncements about what should be. That said, Ravitch, the leading voice in the country speaking out against standardized-test based school reform, does what her critics say she doesn't in an important new chapter at the end of the new paperback edition of the best-selling "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." No doubt those critics still won't like what she has to say.
Jeff Bernstein

Diane Ravitch: Union speaking fees did not change my mind | GothamSchools - 0 views

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    Is Diane Ravitch a "paid union spokesperson," her famous change of heart inspired by fees from the teachers union? The accusation, levied by the philanthropist and hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson recently, draws from a new book about the education reform movement by Steven Brill. But the suggestion that she was bought is simply not accurate, Ravitch told GothamSchools.
Jeff Bernstein

New York is no model, Ravitch says | Philadelphia Public School Notebook - 0 views

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    If Philadelphia is looking to New York City as the exemplar of "best practices" for improving schools by organizing them into support networks, it is looking in the wrong place, according to historian and education analyst Diane Ravitch. "New York City has not had any great success," said Ravitch, in town Wednesday for the conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. "New York used to boast of dramatic test score gains, but they disappeared in 2010." In that year, the state's Department of Education acknowledged that the cut scores had been dropping on the standardized tests. "All the gains disappeared," she said.
Jeff Bernstein

Ravitch and phony reform | The Journal Gazette - 0 views

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    Ravitch, who came to realize that what works in business doesn't work when it comes to education, notes that her critics condemn her as a defender of the status quo. But the status quo is now the unproven approaches championed by Wall Street's hedge-fund managers and billionaire "philanthropists" whose education reform views just happen to fall perfectly in line with efforts to crush organized labor, including teacher unions. The key to improving schools isn't found in vouchers, charter schools, teacher evaluations, merit pay and all of the other current approaches, according to Ravitch. Schools must end the punitive approach to education. They must identify their best performers and allow them to share what they know with other educators. It's making the arts a key piece of the curriculum and ensuring that students learn how to think critically and write well. It's ensuring health care for all children - including prenatal care - and quality early childhood education.
Jeff Bernstein

John Thompson: How Diane Ravitch Became My Intellectual Hero - 0 views

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    "Before I started teaching, I could explain, chapter and verse, why Diane Ravitch was wrong. Although Ravitch's scholarship was impeccable, she caused nothing but headaches for us true believers in educational progressivism. My complaints about Ravitch's demands for a content-rich curriculum disappeared after my first semester in the classroom. I quickly learned Ravitch was right, and that we can not build the bricks of conceptual understanding without the straw of knowledge."
Jeff Bernstein

Eduwonk » Blog Archive » Ignoring Red Herrings - 0 views

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    This week Eric Hanushek and Diane Ravitch are discussing whether removing the lowest-performing teachers is a good idea.  Hanushek started the debate on Monday and Ravitch responded yesterday. Here's Hanushek's response below.   Ravitch will finish the conversation with a post tomorrow.
Jeff Bernstein

The Brian Lehrer Show: Diane Ravitch on School Performance and Standardized Testing - WNYC - 0 views

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    Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University, author of the "Bridging Differences" blog at Education Week and also author of  The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, follows up on a discussion about school performance and the frustration some teachers feel about standardized testing.
Jeff Bernstein

10th Period: Fordham's Response to Ravitch - 0 views

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    You knew this was coming. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where Diane Ravitch worked in the late 1990s before she decided that market-based education reform she helped foster wasn't working, has responded to her remarks about Cleveland's recently announced ed reform plan. They were quite pointed in their criticism of Ravitch's characterizaton of the Cleveland Plan. They said she missed the point; that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson isn't turning the keys over to David Brennan and other for-profit operators -- he just wants to ensure that only great schools remain open whether those be District or Charter. They also critized her characterization of the teacher provisions in the Cleveland Plan (which resemble those found in Senate Bill 5, which Ohio voters rejected by a more than 20-point margin in November) as being anti-teacher.
Jeff Bernstein

Diana Senechal: In Defense Of Diane Ravitch | The New Republic - 0 views

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    When reading Kevin Carey's article on Diane Ravitch in The New Republic ("The Dissenter," November 23, 2011), two thoughts jostled in my mind: first, that any response would give the piece more credit than it deserved; second, that his misleading summary of her scholarship required a rebuttal. The latter thought ultimately won. Given our reactive political climate, in which cursory statements often pass for truth, someone should point out the errors and distortions in Carey's statements.
Jeff Bernstein

What's Wrong with School Reform: Interview with Diane Ravitch | History News Network - 0 views

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    Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, addressed teachers at the National Council for the Social Studies national conference on December 2, 2011.  She agreed to be interviewed for HNN the following week.
Jeff Bernstein

Diane Ravitch exhorts city principals to join evaluations protest | GothamSchools - 0 views

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    City principals should overcome their fear and join with more than a thousand of their colleagues from across the state who oppose New York's teacher evaluation rules, Diane Ravitch urged during a speech to the principals union Tuesday.
Jeff Bernstein

RheeFirst! » Diane Ravitch debates StudentsFirst lobbyist - 0 views

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    Listen as Diane Ravitch dismantle Rhee's proxy, Tim Melton, on issues of teacher tenure, seniority, testing, and teacher evaluation.
Jeff Bernstein

Diane Ravitch Criticizes Gates Foundation On Education - 0 views

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    New York University Professor Diane Ravitch is one of the nation's most prominent critics of the Gates Foundation's approach to education reform - including merit pay for teachers. Ravitch claims, "The movement Bill Gates has launched has created enormous hostility toward teachers." We'll find out why she thinks the Gates Foundation has it wrong on education reform, and what she thinks needs to be done instead.
Jeff Bernstein

Reign of Error: the important new book by Diane Ravitch - 0 views

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    "In the beginning, she laid out what she intended to do.  As should be clear, I believe she more than achieved her goals.  It is the opinion of this reviewer, me, a retired teacher who returned to the classroom to make a difference, in part at the urging of Ravitch, that this book is by far her finest work, and is something with which everyone truly concerned about education should read."
Jeff Bernstein

Podcast of Alter and Ravitch Debate on KKZN-AM - 1 views

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    "Jonathan Alter and Diane Ravitch our special guests to debate education reform. In a Bloomberg column, Alter called out Diane as one of the obstructionists to education reform. Jonathan Alter is a journalist and author who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. Alter is currently a lead columnist for Bloomberg Review. Diane Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education."
Jeff Bernstein

Panel With Ravitch and Rhee Part II | Gary Rubinstein's TFA Blog - 0 views

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    Gary Rubinstein analyzes panel discussion with Michelle Rhee and Diane Ravitch.
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