Diane Ravitch Quotes & Sayings

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. — Diane Ravitch

Research does not support any part of Race to the Top — Diane Ravitch

Those who can't teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers. — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

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

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. — Diane Ravitch

Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds. — Diane Ravitch

It defies reason to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. would march arm in arm with Wall Street hedge fund managers and members of ALEC to lead a struggle for the privatization of public education, the crippling of unions, and the establishment of for-profit schools. — Diane Ravitch

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

Of course, all students should learn African history, as they should learn the history of other continents and major civilizations. But this history should be taught accurately and based on the best scholarship, not ideology or politics. — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

If we continue on the present course, with big foundations and the federal government investing heavily in opening more charter schools, the result is predictable. Charter schools in urban centers will enroll the motivated children of the poor, while the regular public schools will become schools of last resort for those who never applied or were rejected. — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

When you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making it a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong. — Diane Ravitch

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

One problem with test-based accountability, as currently defined and used, is that it removes all responsibility from students and their families for the students' academic performance. NCLB neglected to acknowledge that students share in the responsibility for their academic performance and that they are merely passive recipients of their teachers' influence. — Diane Ravitch

Anyone who truly cares about children must be repelled by the insistence on ranking them, rating them, and labeling them. Whatever the tests measure is not the sum and substance of any child. The tests do not measure character, spirit, heart, soul, potential. When overused and misused, when attached to high stakes, the tests stifle the very creativity and ingenuity that our society needs most. Creativity and ingenuity stubbornly resist standardization. Tests should be used sparingly to help students and teachers, not to allocate rewards and punishments and not to label children and adults by their scores. — Diane Ravitch

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? — Diane Ravitch

A historian tries to understand what happened, why it happened, what was the context, who did what, and what assumptions led them to act as they did. A historian customarily displays a certain diffidence about trying to influence events, knowing that unanticipated developments often lead to unintended consequences. — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

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? — Diane Ravitch

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

A democratic society must seek to give every young person, whether native-born or newcomer, the knowledge and skills to succeed as an adult. In a political system that relies on the participation of informed citizens, everyone should, at a minimum, learn to speak, read and write a common language. Those who would sustain our democratic life must understand its history. Tailoring children's education to the color of their skin, their national origins, or their presumed ethnicity is in some fundamental sense contrary to our nation's founding ideals of democracy, equality and opportunity. — Diane Ravitch

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

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

Will non-English-speaking students start speaking English because their teachers were fired? Will children come to school ready to learn because their teachers were fired?
It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called "Mrs. Mimi" wrote the other day that we fire teachers because "we can't fire poverty." Since we can't fire poverty, we can't fire students, and we can't fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.
— Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

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

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. — Diane Ravitch

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

What matters most is for the school, the district, and the state to be able to say that more students have reached "proficiency." This sort of fraud ignores the students' interests while promoting the interests of adults who take credit for nonexistent improvements. — Diane Ravitch

Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions — Diane Ravitch

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

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

Social scientists generally agree that students' families (especially family income, which determines advantages and opportunity) have an even bigger impact on student performance than their school or teachers. — Diane Ravitch

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

Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves? — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

An attack on Public Education is an attack on Democracy — Diane Ravitch

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. — Diane Ravitch

NAEP data show beyond question that test scores in reading and math have improved for almost every group of students over the past two decades; slowly and steadily in the case of reading, dramatically in the case of mathematics. Students know more and can do more in these two basic skills subjects now than they could twenty or forty years ago... So the next time you hear someone say that the system is "broken," that American students aren't as well educated as they used to be, that our schools are failing, tell that person the facts. — Diane Ravitch

Nations such as Finland, Canada, Japan, and South Korea spend time and resources improving the skills of their teachers, not selectively firing them in relation to student test scores. — Diane Ravitch

Public education is not broken. It is not failing or declining. The diagnosis is wrong, and the solutions of the corporate reformers are wrong. Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation. But public education is not 'broken.' Public education is in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it. — Diane Ravitch