Diane Ravitch Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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
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
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
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
The person who knows how will always have a job. The person who knows why will always be his boss.

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
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